Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

GAIRLOCH HARBOUR ORDER CONFIRMATION

Mr. Secretary Rifkind presented a Bill to confirm a Provisional Order under section 7 of the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936, relating to Gairloch Harbour: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be considered upon Tuesday 9 December and to be printed. [Bill 12.]

SHETLAND ISLANDS COUNCIL (HAM VOE, FOULA)ORDER CONFIRMATION

Mr. Secretary Rifkind presented a Bill to confirm a Provisional Order under section 7 of the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936, relating to Shetland Islands Council (Ham Voe, Foula): And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be considered upon Tuesday, 9 December and to be printed. [Bill 13.]

Oral Answers to Questions — FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

Nuclear Missiles

Mr. Cohen: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is his policy towards elimination of all strategic nuclear missiles by 1966.

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Sir Geoffrey Howe): My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and President Reagan agreed at their meeting at Camp David on 15 November that NATO's strategy of forward defence and flexible response would continue to require effective nuclear deterrence based on a mix of systems.

Mr. Cohen: It has been widely reported by many, including President Reagan and Secretary Shultz, that at the Reykjavik summit, before it broke down over star wars, President Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev had agreed on the elimination of all strategic nuclear missiles by 1996 without condition. If the British Government do not agree with that, on what basis was the United States able to put the proposal on the negotiating table? Why do the Government not agree to that aim and work towards it instead of increasing Britain's nuclear capacity by 800 per cent. with the purchase of Trident and sending silly notes to the Russians which effectively say "Nuclear for ever"?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will look forward to taking part in some future debate on this subject. The three important priorities of British

policy and Alliance policy were clearly set out by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and President Reagan at Camp David. These were INF, 50 per cent. cuts in strategic weapons and a complete ban on chemical weapons. We should focus our attention on these priorities, and if we manage to realise them it will be an historic achievement.

Mr. Conway: When my right hon. and learned Friend is considering policy, will he bear in mind that Britain's unilateral action on the production of chemical and biological weapons has had no effect whatsoever on the Warsaw Pact nations? What hope could there be in pursuing a unilateral policy?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: My hon. Friend makes precisely the point which was made more than once in our last debate on this subject. The response of the Soviet Union to the prolonged abstention from the production of chemical weapons by the United States and the United Kingdom is a classic condemnation of the folly of unilateral disarmament.

Mr. Wallace: We know that the talks at Reykjavik foundered on the strategic defence initiative. On that important issue, can the Secretary of State say what representations, if any, were made to his United States counterpart on his present interpretation of the anti-ballistic missile treaty as it relates to SDI development? Will he inform the House of his present position on that?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: It might be useful to draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to one of the few sensible passages in the speech made yesterday by the Leader of the Opposition, when even he said that Mr. Gorbachev was wrong to link the prospect of all arms control progress with concessions on SDI.

Mr. Carttiss: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the credibility of the Soviet Union in calling for a nuclear-free world would be greatly enhanced if it ceased its aggression in Afghanistan, which country the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) visited recently without calling for a Russian-free Afghanistan?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: My hon. Friend is right. The continued presence of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, with more than 100,000 troops, calls in question to a considerable extent the seriousness of its commitment to progress on this topic.

Mr. Healey: Is the Foreign Secretary aware that two days after President Reagan met the Prime Minister, Secretary Shultz stated, in speech in a Chicago, that it was the firm intention of the United States to seek the abolition of all ballistic missiles within 10 years? Does he really believe that the United States would provide the British Government with ballistic missiles for Trident submarines at the very moment that it was abolishing all its own ballistic missiles? Does he even believe that the United States would provide the British Government with an 800 per cent. increase in the target capability of British nuclear forces at the same time as it was cutting its own nuclear forces by 50 per cent.? Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the Defence Secretary in his speech this week confirmed the figures which I have just given?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am aware of the fact that, at Reykjavik itself and immediately thereafter, Mr. Gorbachev affirmed the legitimacy of the presence and modernisation of Britain's nuclear strategic deterrent.


Subsequently, at Camp David President Reagan reaffirmed the United States' modernisation policy in the same respect, and specifically did so in relation to Britain. I am aware also of the fact that President Reagan likewise has reaffirmed his commitment to the priorities agreed with the Prime Minister at Camp David.

Central America

Mr. Flannery: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has any plans to seek to pay an official visit to Central America.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Tim Eggar): My right hon. and learned Friend's next visit to the area will be to Mexico in early January next year.

Mr. Flannery: Before the Foreign Minister goes to Mexico in January next year, will he undertake to talk to his American counterpart and raise with him the democratic principle that a freely elected Government do not attack another freely elected Government or connive to attack such a freely elected Government? Will he make it clear that the mess that the President of America has now got himself into stems from an undemocratic arming of the so-called Contras? They are basically the people who defended the dictator, Somoza. Will he make it clear, publicly and loudly, that we do not agree with the attacks on a democratically elected Government and that that has always been the principle——

Mr. Speaker: Order. It is unfair to go on as long as that.

Mr. Eggar: As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has already made clear, it is not for Ministers at the Dispatch Box to answer for United States policy. We continue to advocate political solutions to problems in Central America on the basis of Contadora objectives rather than military solutions.

Mr. Corbyn: Before the Minister goes to Mexico next year, will he consider the problems of El Salvador and the fact that 50,000 illegal killings have taken place in the past seven years, that 1,500 people were killed last year by death squads, and that 234 cases of torture have already been recorded this year by the Committee of the Mothers of the Disappeared? Is it correct that, in those circumstances, with the guilt so much upon the El Salvador army, the British Government should pay for the training of El Salvador army officers in this country, to go back to continue the killing and murdering of the people of El Salvador?

Mr. Eggar: I imagine that the hon. Gentleman referred to the training offered to one El Salvador cadet. Similar assistance has been offered to many developing countries in many parts of the world. That assistance is entirely consistent with our wish to see improvement in the combat behaviour of the El Salvador army. Similar training facilities have been offered by Contadora group countries.

Mr. Foulkes: Is the Minister aware that if the Foreign Secretary were to visit Nicaragua he would confirm that many more civilians, including women and children, are being killed by the increasing ferocity of the attacks by the US-funded Contra terrorists? Does he agreee that if the terrorist leader, Arturo Cruz, is allowed to incite support for terrorists at a conference to be held this weekend in the Barbican and organised by the Committee for a Free

Nicaragua, under the direction of the research assistant of the hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Carlisle), it will make a total farce of the Government's claim to support the Contadora peace process? What action will the Foreign Office take to stop this terrorist leader from speaking in London?

Mr. Eggar: I, too, read the press report that appeared this morning. There is, of course, no official involvement of any kind in the conference to which the hon. Gentleman refers. As the Government have repeatedly made clear, we have advocated a political rather than a military solution to the problem in Nicaragua.

South Africa

Mr. Pike: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent representations have been made by Her Majesty's Government to the Government of South Africa regarding the policy of apartheid.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: We have repeatedly made known to the South African Government our abhorrence of and opposition to apartheid. Most recently on 14 November, with our European partners, we made representations to express our concern at possible forced removals from Oukasie township.

Mr. Pike: In view of the Government's declared continued opposition to the policy of apartheid and the phrase in the Queen's Speech referring to the Government's support for the independence of Namibia, what do the Government intend to do to pursue that policy and to ensure that that independence is secured as soon as possible?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: We intend to maintain our pressure for the implementation of resolution 435 as part of our overall policy for progress in South Africa.

Sir Ian Lloyd: Has my right hon. and learned Friend noted the courageous and ingenious solution prepared by the multiracial conference in the town, known as Indaba? Does he share my regret that it has been rejected by President Botha? Will he offer what ecouragement and support he can to the people of the town to hold aloft the beacons of hope and reason in that country?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I have followed the progress of the Natal Indaba with interest. When I was in South Africa in the summer I discussed it with the provincial administrator of Natal, whom I have known for many years since we were at Cambridge together. Like my hon. Friend, I welcome the efforts that have been made to reach agreement between all sections and groups in Natal along the lines projected. I am surprised at the move that appears to have been made towards rejection of those proposals.

Mr. Winnick: Is the Foreign Secretary going to congratulate the anti-apartheid movement on the way in which it has persuaded Barclays bank to withdraw its holdings in South Africa? Is he aware that we hope that this approach will be followed by many other companies? Has the right hon. and learned Gentleman any comments to make on the brutal killings last night of a couple in South Africa who were noted for their campaigning against apartheid?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I cannot make a specific comment on that tragedy because I am not armed with information


about it, beyond what the hon. Gentleman, no doubt, has already seen. One regrets all deaths from violence in this type of situation. It has been our view that decisions of the kind to which the hon. Gentleman refers must be taken on commercial grounds. A continuation of the present policies in South Africa is not likely to discourage such decisions. We do not think that disinvestment for South Africa is likely in the long run to be in the interests of changes away from apartheid.

Mr. Nicholls: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that before Barclays pulled out of South Africa the social policies that it adopted played no small part in persuading the South African regime to liberalise as much as it has done? What possible incentive could there now be to the South African Government to continue with those liberalising policies when the more they liberalise, the more they are attacked by Labour Members?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I note the premise from which my hon. Friend is arguing, but the failure to move away fast enough from the policy of apartheid, which the whole House deplores, is one reason why this type of difficult commercial decision is forced on companies in this position. Of course, my hon. Friend is right to commend the way in which British companies, while they remain in South Africa, have been trying to lead opinion in the right way.

Mr. Anderson: Has the Foreign Secretary noticed in the past few weeks that the South African Government have shelved amendments to the Group Areas Act, have rejected the Kwazulu-Natal option and have intensified forced removals and the torture of children in detention? In the light of those movements all one way and his snub during his July visit, does he still believe that he can influence the South African Government constructively, or would he rather congratulate the anti-apartheid movement and the National Union of Students on the Barclays withdrawal, follow their course, and say that he can constructively disengage our Government from South Africa?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman is making a more than usually convoluted analysis of a situation that is difficult enough anyway. From the view point of both sides of the House, progress towards the removal of apartheid is much slower than we would wish. We make that judgment at the end of a period in which some voluntary disinvestment has taken place and some additional sanctions have been put in place and in which there has been some advocacy of all kinds. None of those had the effect on the scale that we would like. It must be said that some of the recent action by the South African Government, including the deferment of action on the Group Areas Act and the declaration made about the effective organisation status of the United Democratic Front, must be seen as discouraging. We must continue to renew our plea for an unmistakeable commitment to the abolition of apartheid and the commencement of the necessary dialogue.

Sir John Biggs-Davison: As the Kwazulu-Natal plan would have brought about universal franchise and a non-racial Executive for an important province of South Africa, is not the present rejection of that plan deeply disappointing? Does my right hon. and learned Friend think that this is because of electoral considerations and

a reaction to the anti-apartheid movement and some of its extreme manifestations, and will he convey to the South African Government our feeling that this is a great disappointment and that we feel that this kind of approach should be supported?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I understand precisely the point made by my hon. Friend. I cannot help him with an explanation about the reason underlying the apparent lack of enthusiasm for these proposals. However, it must be said that the party on which the South African Government depend was not taking part in the Indaba discussions. The discussions were not fully representative of all those concerned. I am sure that it is right for the South African Government to take note of the points on this topic expressed by my hon. Friends the Members for Havant (Sir I. Lloyd) and for Epping Forest (Sir J. Biggs-Davison), sitting as they do beside each other—spiritually as well as physically.

Immigration

Mr. Madden: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how much revenue he anticipates receiving annually from fees charged for entry clearance certificates; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Eggar: Income from entry clearance fees during the next financial year is estimated at £23 million. This is still well short of the cost of operating the entry clearance service overseas, which is about £35 million.

Mr. Madden: Is it not extraordinary that the Prime Minister should hold tea parties at Downing street to beg Americans to visit Britain and yet impose a £20 visa tax on selected black nation people who wish to visit Britain? Will the Minister investigate claims that officials of the British embassy in Islamabad are accepting visa applications from those at the head of the queue and telling the other people in the queue to come back the next day? Clearly, this allows Ministers to claim that applications are being dealt with on the day that they are lodged, but it is causing considerable inconvenience, especially to elderly people who have to travel hundreds of miles to lodge their applications.

Mr. Eggar: If the hon. Gentleman would like to provide me with details of what he has just said, I shall look into the matter. It is typical of the hon. Gentleman that he does not accept that our posts in the Indian subcontinent did an excellent job during the period when the visa regime was introduced. The vast majority of applicants are processed on the day on which they apply, and any waiting times are extremely short.

Mr. Brandon-Bravo: Whatever view an accountant might take of this matter, does my hon. Friend agree that the justice of the visa system is widely supported in Britain? Will he also note that the letters that I have sent to him from my constituents represent a range of minority communities which support what we have done?

Mr. Eggar: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's comments. The feedback that we have had from the subcontinent and from many hon. Members in all parts of the House has been positive.

Mr. James Lamond: If it is shown over a period of time that considerable difficulties are being encountered by those who apply for visas, will the Minister not allow the


cost to deter him from taking steps to improve the situation and to reduce the waiting time? Will he make quite sure that those people who have to come in an emergency, for example, are speedily dealt with?

Mr. Eggar: I am personally keeping this under very close review. We have considerably reinforced our posts throughout the subcontinent and I shall continue to keep a close watch on what is happening. In urgent, compassionate cases, of course I am always willing to receive telephone calls in my office to see if I can do anything to expedite the applications.

Mr. Budgen: [Interruption.]—When my hon. Friend makes his statement will he please note that there appears to be very little objection to these proposals from the Asian community? The system seems to be settling down very well.

Mr. Eggar: I am sorry that I threw such confusion into my hon. Friend's throat. I agree with what he says.

Mr. Tony Banks: Can the Minister tell us whether all high commissions are staffed up to full complement to process visas? Secondly, can he say how many visa applications have been refused in each of the countries where they have recently been introduced?

Mr. Eggar: I am afraid that at the moment I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the answer to his second question, but I shall willingly write to him with details. The staff has beeen considerably incresed and we are keeping a close watch on it. We expect an increase in applications during the summer months, because that it is traditionally the time of peak travel, and we have plans to reinforce the posts thereafter. It is not only in the area of the visitor that we are increasing staff resources, because we have seen a dramatic improvement in waiting time in Dhaka over the past year. Waiting times have been more than halved for settlement queues for the priority cases.

Mr. Spencer: Is my hon. Friend aware that I was charged £20 for my entry visa to India and that if it had been refused there would have been no right of appeal? Is he further aware that it was limited to the stated purpose for which the journey was made? Does he agree that our system confers greater rights on applicants than so some of those upon which the Labour party lavish such praise?

Mr. Eggar: It is a unique aspect of our visa application system that there is right of appeal. That is not shared by other countries.

Mr. Dalyell: Three answers ago the Under-Secretary of State said that he had support for the visa system from both sides of the House. Can he name any hon. Members on the Opposition Benches who support the system?

Mr. Eggar: I have received letters from many hon. Members in which they have made it clear that they are grateful for the way in which we have been able to process applications from their constitueents.

Iran-Iraq War

Mr. Latham: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent initiatives he has taken to increase support for the existing United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the war between Iran and Iraq; and what specific steps he has taken to draw to the attention of the Security Council the use of chemical weapons in that war.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: We gave our firm support to Security Council resolutions 582 and 588, both adopted this year, and shall continue to press for their implementation. We have strongly supported successive statements by the President of the Security Council condemning the use of chemical weapons in the conflict, in particular the statement on 21 March, which was subsequently supported by the Twelve.

Mr. George Latham: While friends of the United States of America and Israel will greatly regret the supply of weapons to the brutal and violent regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, will my right hon. and learned Friend assure us that our hands are clean? What are the allegedly non-lethal weapons that we are allowed to supply?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that he requests. The guidelines that we have followed are those that were stated to the House in answer to the leader of the Liberal party on 29 October 1985. Those are the guidelines that we believe to be right and which we have followed.

Mr. Beith: Are the British Government opposed to the supply of weapons from the United States to Iran, whether or not that is related to attempts to release hostages? If they are, why was that not made clear during the Prime Minister's visit to President Reagan? Why have the British Government been supportive of President Reagan on this issue when senior members of his own Administration have been distancing themselves from him?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: Our policy has never been in doubt. Since this matter has come to light the United States Government have said that they will not supply any further arms to Iran, but will make every effort to stop the supply of arms to that country from any source. That is a welcome reaffirmation of the policy that we have followed.

Mr. Robert Atkins: Can my right hon. and learned Friend comment on the fact that we are apparently not prepared to sell equipment such as that manufactured in my constituency by Leyland and Birmingham Rubber, which produces defence equipment to protect people from the affects of chemical weapons to which he referred? Surely, in the interest of humanity, let alone the possibility of us selling equipment to either of those countries which would be beneficial to them, we could make a more sensible contribution to our export drive and to humanity as well?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: Neither my hon. Friend the Minister of State nor I are aware of any applications for export licences for such products. The guidelines that we apply are those to which I have already referred. We have and will continue to scrutinise rigorously all applications for export licences, applying those standards.

Mr. George Robertson: If President Reagan continues to reaffirm his view that it was right to sell arms to Iran so as to establish influence with the regime, does the Foreign Secretary share the Prime Minister's implicit faith in the tactic of establishing relations with the Iranians by drowning them in billions of pounds worth of arms?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I think that the hon. Gentleman has taken his gift for parody even further than usual. There is no question of the United Kingdom supporting such a policy. Our policy is exactly as I have stated. We should,


of course, like to bring Iran back into better relations with the West and to see an end to the Iran-Iraq war, but that is no reason for us to depart from the guidelines that I have enunciated again today. We are responsible for the policies of this country, not of the United States.

Disarmament

Mr. Soames: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations Her Majesty's Government have received from their allies on the United Kingdom's attitude to arms negotiations; and if he will make a statement.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: Since the Reykjavik meeting between President Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev, the process of close Alliance consultations on arms control has continued both multilaterally and bilaterally. That has included the meeting of the North Atlantic Council on 13 October and the Nuclear Planning Group meeting in Gleneagles on 21–22 October. There have, of course, been several bilateral contacts with the USA and France.

Mr. Soames: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the concerns and attitudes of our European allies, including the Socialist Governments of Spain and France, show that the policies of the Labour party are out of touch with European as well as United States opinion and will undermine rather than assist arms control?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I certainly agree with my hon. Friend. The attitude of Socialist Governments throughout Europe shows how far from reality the Labour party now finds itself.

Mr. Cartwright: Have the Government had representations from their allies about their apparent reluctance to endorse the zero-zero option on intermediate-range nuclear weapons? Does the Foreign Secretary accept the repeated statement of the Secretary-General of NATO, Lord Carrington, that zero-zero was implicit in NATO's original twin track decision of December 1979? Are the Government now going back on their oft repeated statements that cruise and Pershing deployment could be halted, reduced or totally eliminated if the Soviet Union was prepared to remove its SS20 missiles?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: No. I am only disappointed that the hon. Gentleman, careful student that he is of the observations of the Secretary-General of NATO, had not studied so closely my own observations in the debate on 14 November, when I stated plainly that the Government have no doubt about the legitimacy of going for the zero-zero agreement on the basis discussed at Reykjavik. The hon. Gentleman is right in that that has been the policy of the Alliance at least since 1979 and it has been our consistent objective since then—on the right terms, including dealing with Soviet shorter-range weapons.

Sir Peter Blaker: Does my right hon. and learned Friend recall that a few minutes ago the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) referred to a speech in which Secretary Shultz declared his determination to secure the abolition of certain categories of nuclear weapons within 10 years? The right hon. Gentleman concluded that that statement threatened the future of our Trident programme, but does my right hon. and learned Friend also recall that in the 1960s both superpowers declared their firm intention to secure general and complete disarmament within 10 years or so?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I recall that. It has been an oft-proclaimed objective not just of both superpowers but of Governments of all parties in this country, but we must proceed in that direction by realistic steps, and they are as defined and agreed by President Reagan and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister at Camp David.

Mr. Allan Roberts: Will the Foreign Secretary confirm that the Prime Minister is in favour of the zero-zero option only after the next general election and that she went to Camp David to persuade the United States President not to follow up the Reykjavik negotiations before the general election as it would jeopardise her campaign to keep the bomb and Britain's independent nuclear deterrent and prevent the Tories from running a scaremongering campaign against the Labour party on that issue? Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that the Prime Minister is against multilateral as well as unilateral disarmament?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman compounds a series of absurd propositions. The Government have been, and are; committed to further progress in the direction of arms control on the basis of the clear priorities set out after the Camp David meeting. In the absence of advance in that direction, it is also Government policy to recognise the necessity for the nuclear deterrent to remain in place as part of the West's defensive policy. That is recognised by virtually every Government and party in the Alliance, save that to which the hon. Gentleman has the misfortune to belong.

Mr. Cash: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that there is some irony—which compounds the absurd position to which my right hon. and learned Friend referred—in the Leader of the Opposition cavorting around the United States advocating a policy that was denied even by General Secretary Gorbachev when he conceded that we should have the nuclear deterrent? Furthermore, does he agree that the idea of a European ditch has as much chance of success as the Maginot line or Offa's dyke?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: Yes, that is one of the most astonishing aspects of the various propositions to which the Leader of the Opposition has been committing himself. The way in which he is arguing in favour of a ban of United States nuclear forces from this country gravely jeopardises the presence of United States conventional forces in defence of NATO, gravely jeopardises the Alliance, and gravely jeopardises the security of this country.

Mr. Healey: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that his unwillingness and inability to answer my earlier question was due to the fact that the Government are so frightened that President Reagan will cancel Trident, as Skybolt was cancelled some years ago, that, according to the Daily Telegraph, they are investigating the possibility of reviewing Britain's deterrent to some sort of cruise programme? Is he aware that the Prime Minister herself, in this week's issue of Janes Defence Weekly, rightly pointed out that a deterrent based on cruise would be much more expensive than Trident and would come into service much too late to be of any value?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: It is encouraging to have the confirmation of the right hon. Gentleman, with his distinguished expert knowledge of the matter, of the


wisdom of the United Kingdom remaining committed to the Trident programme with the full support of the President of the United States.

Iran-Iraq (Service Personnel)

Mr. Wareing: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many members of the armed forces of (a) Iraq and (b) Iran have received military training in the United Kingdom since 1980.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Tim Renton): Some members of the Iraqi armed forces received training at Ministry of Defence establishments in the United Kingdom in each of the years 1981 to 1986. A small number of Iranian military personnel also received training at these establishments in the United Kingdom between 1981 and 1984.

Mr. Wareing: Upon what moral principle has the Government's policy been based? Will the hon. Gentleman assure the House that no further military personnel from Iraq or Iran will be trained in this country? Will he investigate the activities of Jackob Nimrodi, who has a flat in London, and who I understand negotiates 80 per cent. of Iran's import of arms procurement from an office in Victoria street? Will he arrange that that office is closed forthwith?

Mr. Renton: The training of military personnel in this country is done only in line with the defence guidelines to which my right hon. and learned Friend has already referred. Such training is essentially non-combat related.
On the hon. Gentleman's last point, I assure him—and I have read the newspaper cuttings very carefully, too—that we have no evidence whatsoever of any illegal activity in respect of the purchase of arms, either for Iraq or Iran, through this country. Such purchasing arrangements are not illegal, but it would be illegal to try to export without an export licence. Were there any evidence of that it would be investigated immediately.

Mr. Jackson: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is in British and Western interests to seek to break down the self-imposed barriers of isolation in Iran?

Mr. Renton: Yes, my hon. Friend is right. As a long-term objective we will seek to establish a better relationship with the Iranian Government so that once this dreadful war is ended—a war which both sides of the House bitterly regret—we may have a reasonable relationship with a country that will be of extreme importance in the middle east.

Mr. Ernie Ross: What is the difference between America and Israel selling arms to both sides and us training the personnel of both sides? Would it not be better to do something more specific to try to bring peace to that area?

Mr. Renton: I repeat again that the numbers in training have been extremely limited, and that the training itself is essentially not combat-related. It is carried out only in accordance with the very clear guidelines that were first put into effect in December 1984, which were enunciated to the House by my right hon. and learned Friend in late 1985, and which he has just repeated.

Sir John Farr: Does my hon. Friend have any evidence that training in the use of very sophisticated weapons is

taking place by other European countries, particularly France? Will he tell the House anything he may know about that?

Mr. Renton: As my hon. Friend will be aware, we are not responsible either for training in other countries or for defence sales from other countries. As part of the campaign in which we have taken part, not least in the United Nations, we urge that all countries that are suppliers of military equipment to either side should exercise guidelines that are as strict as ours. I must stress that such guidelines have lost British manufacturers orders worth many hundreds of millions of pounds in recent years, but none the less we believe that such guidelines are right and are morally defensible.

Mr. Tom Clarke: How can the Minister equate this training programme with his right hon. and learned Friend's enthusiasm, as expressed at the Dispatch Box today, for resolutions 582 and 588 of the Security Council especially when one country is sponsoring terrorism in Nicaragua?

Mr. Renton: As I have already explained, there has been no military training of Iranians at all in Britain since 1984. The numbers that have subsequently come here from Iraq have been very limited indeed, and their training is essentially non-combat related.

Falkland Islands

Mr. Wood: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has any plans to visit the Falkland Islands.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I have no plans at present to visit the Falkland islands.

Mr. Wood: Does my right hon. and learned Friend believe that the response of the Argentine Government to the British proposal for an agreed multilateral fisheries conservation regime in the south Atlantic suggests that the Argentine Government are more interested in pursuing propaganda about Falklands sovereignty than in reducing tension in the area?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that the Argentine response was disappointing, but perhaps inevitable. It was no doubt intended to rally domestic opinion and, perhaps, to mobilise international support. We have made known our willingness to review with them the best way forward on conservation policy and other ways of restoring our relationships to a more normal basis.

Mr. Livsey: Will the Secretary of State press the Falkland Islands Development Corporation to accept the plans of my constituent, Captain E. P. Carlisle, for a ship-based slaughterhouse to slaughter sheep on the Falkland Island as the beginning of a new meat industry?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am sure that the plans to which the hon. Gentleman has referred deserve study.

Mr. Harris: Will my right hon. and learned Friend reject absolutely and completely the criticism from Opposition parties and internationally about the imposition of the exclusive fishing zone around the Falklands, as that must make sense for the conservation of these very valuable fish resources?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I shall certainly do that. As I made plain to the House when we announced the decision, the decision was taken because of the urgent need for conservation. We had tried for a long time to achieve a collaborative and co-operative solution. We would have preferred multilateral arrangements under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, without prejudice to the question of sovereignty, and we would still like to put in place a multilateral alternative.

Mr. Dalyell: Does not failure to talk play into the hands of the Argentine military, who have not gone away?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: No. I am always astonished at those who assert that the posture of the United Kingdom in relation to the Falkland Islands has, or might have, a decisive effect on the future of Argentine democracy. We hope that Argentine democracy is more securely established than that. We hope that it is sufficiently securely established to recognise the right of the Falkland islanders to their own democratic rights.

Mr. Bowen Wells: Will my right hon. and learned Friend also confirm that the institution of a fishing zone around the Falkland Islands is the most obvious way to bring income to the Falkland islanders, thus enabling them to become more independent of support from this country?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: My hon. Friend is quite right to draw attention to that additional beneficial possibility as a result of the establishment of the multilateral regime.

Mr. Foulkes: Will the Foreign Secretary confirm that he has now received from the Food and Agriculture Organisation a draft proposal for a multilteral fisheries regime in the south Atlantic? In view of the refusal of the Soviet Union to recognise our unilateral regime or to apply for licences, would it not be better to think again and to proceed on a multilateral basis? Finally, will he have a copy of the FAO report placed in the Library, or is he afraid to have it published because it underlines the Government's foolish and dangerous policy on this issue?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: We have not received the FAO report, although we have seen a first draft of it. It broadly confirms our assessment of the need for conservation steps to be taken in the south Atlantic.

Mr. Foulkes: Multilaterally?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: Multilaterally, of course. From the moment that we made the announcement we said that we would prefer a multilateral regime. During the past 18 months we have been striving to establish a multilateral regime. We have failed to obtain a response on that from the Argentine Government. We would still like such a regime. If the hon. Gentleman would like to address his case to the Argentine Government instead of to this one he might be more effective in his advocacy.

Sir John Biggs-Davison: Does my right hon. and learned Friend recall that when the fisheries regime was sensibly introduced, the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) spoke of dire consequences, of conflict, and even of conflict with the Soviet Union? Will my right hon. and learned Friend tell the House how the regime is progressing?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: There are increasing signs of willingness from all countries involved, especially those involved in fishing, to make applications for licences on the basis of the regime that we have outlined.

Intermediate Nuclear Forces

Mr. Roy Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs his policy towards the zero-zero option for intermediate nuclear forces.

Mr. Renton: NATO partners have consistently made it clear that arrangements on INF must include equal and global limits. An agreement for the elimination of longer-range intermediate nuclear forces in Europe would have to include tight constraints on the numbers of SS20s in Soviet Asia, and on Soviet shorter-range intermediate nuclear forces. Effective verification will be essential.

Mr. Roy Hughes: Was not President Reagan's unilateral action in breaking the SALT 2 agreement a retrograde step? Likewise, have not the British Government been equally destructive regarding agreement on a zero-zero option by linking it with conventional reductions? Is it not time for a constructive dialogue on those important issues?

Mr. Renton: I agree with the hon. Gentleman's last point. That is precisely what has been happening in recent weeks, and what we hope will continue to happen in the months ahead. On SALT 2, we have repeatedly made it clear that the SALT agreements should be observed by both sides. We have also made it clear that the Soviet Union has a case to answer as regards possible breaches and that it should respond to legitimate United States anxieties about Soviet compliance. On zero-zero, it is clear that as we move, as I hope we shall, in the months ahead to long-term elimination of long-range weapons and constraints on short-range weapons, the disparities in conventional weapons and conventional manpower, which are much in favour of the Soviets at present, must be confronted at the same time, especially if central Europe is to become a safer place.

Mr. Dorrell: Can my hon. Friend think of any conceivable reason why the Warsaw Pact should reduce its INF deployments to zero if the west adopted the policy advocated by the Opposition of reducing ours to zero without any conditionality on the Soviets or any negotiations with them?

Mr. Renton: That is right, of course. The fact that NATO countries were so firm in deploying cruise and Pershing in western Europe has brought the Soviets back to the negotiating table and will, we hope, lead to an eventual zero-zero intermediate forces agreement.

Mr. Meadowcroft: Are there not great gains for Europe—

Mr. Skinner: Owen's puppets.

Mr. Meadowcroft: —especially in the intermediate nuclear forces zero-zero option? Given that those are not directly linked to SDI, what initiative are the Government making in respect of the Geneva talks to put that question back on to the agenda?

Mr. Renton: I am sorry, but due to the interruptions of hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), I did not hear the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question.

Mr. Meadowcroft: What are the gains for Europe in the zero-zero option on intermediate nuclear forces? What initiatives are the British Government taking?

Mr. Renton: Of course, there are great dangers to Europe in moving towards the removal of long-range intermediate nuclear forces. Secretary Shultz consulted extensively NATO allies after the Reykjavik talks and the Vienna talks. The Americans have shown considerable willingness to listen to west European NATO allies' points of view on that subject. Most recently, the statement arrived at by President Reagan and the Prime Minister at Camp David was a positive step forward that has been welcomed by our European allies.

Sir Patrick Wall: As we move towards zero-zero in intermediate weapons, are there any discussions with the Soviets on short-range nuclear weapons—the SS21, 22, 23 and 24—which must be linked with any reductions in intermediate weapons?

Mr. Renton: My hon. Friend is right. There must be an agreement to limit short-range intermediate nuclear weapons. We would like to have an INF agreement that would incorporate a freeze on Soviet SS22 and SS23 systems. This would circumvent agreement on long-range intermediate nuclear weapons and, at the same time, there would be an agreed right, if necessary, for the United States to match the figures that the Soviets have at present.

Nuclear Weapons

Mr. Caborn: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is Her Majesty's Government's policy concerning proposals for a nuclear weapon-free corridor in central Europe.

Mr. Renton: Proposals for a nuclear weapon-free corridor or zone would not enhance NATO security. Such areas could still be targeted by weapons located outside the zone. Such weapons could also be moved into those areas at short notice, and at a time of crisis. Real progress will be made only through significant, balanced and verifiable reductions in nuclear armaments.

Mr. Caborn: It is unfortunate that such a negative answer should be given by the Minister. I am sure he will know that the recommendation came from the Olaf Palme commission, which called for, as part of the entire strategy, a 300-mile corridor in Europe. Indeed, that policy has been picked up by the SDP in West Germany, which has come to some arrangement with regard to a 150-mile corridor, if it is in a position to implement it. Although that would be only a small but significant step towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, will the Government rethink their position in a more positive light, not the negative position that has been given from the Dispatch Box?

Mr. Renton: I must tell the hon. Gentleman that the Foreign Minister of the German Democratic Republic, Mr. Fischer, who was with us last week, did not once mention a nuclear-free corridor. The reason is that such corridors only give the illusion of security. Where the weapons are targeted matters far more than where they are based. The hon. Gentleman represents part of the city of Sheffield, which has declared itself a nuclear weapon-free zone. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that, rather than spend £250,000 a year on a peace budget and £500 on a

CND balloon on nuclear free-zone day, the hard-pressed residents of Sheffield would prefer a reduction in their rates.

Mr. Waller: Is my hon. Friend aware that the nuclear issues and emergency planning committee of the city of Bradford metropolitan council is actively promoting its own foreign policy and recently met Herr Schneidratus of the East German embassy, when Councillor Rye and his colleagues on the committee responded enthusiastically to the idea of a nuclear-free corridor in central Europe? Is that not a naive reaction, bearing in mind that the idea of a nuclear-free zone in central Europe is completely discredited and that it would involve the withdrawal of our deterrent from central Europe while the Warsaw Pact retained its intermediate weapons to the east of the Urals, which can hit anywhere in Europe?

Mr. Renton: I notice, too, that Manchester is promoting a nuclear-free Europe at a cost of at least £500,000. The city's nuclear-free zone is being guarded by five full-time staff at a cost of £95,000 a year. The inhabitants of eastern Europe, notably the German Democratic Republic, would prefer, not a nuclear weapon-free zone or corridor, but the withdrawal of some of the 400,000 Soviet troops who are stationed in that country.

Mr. George Robertson: Instead of sneering at genuine efforts to promote peace and understanding in Europe, can the Minister give a more constructive response to a proposal which would help to reduce risks and tension in Europe by increasing the time span for taking decisions on the central front? Is there not something to be said for a policy which unites the SDP of West Germany, the Communist party of East Germany and the leader of the British Social Democratic party, who endorsed it in the Palme commission report?

Mr. Renton: I wonder whether the policy also has the support of the Liberal party. The hon. Gentleman is far too intelligent not to know that nuclear weapon-free corridors 300 km wide mean absolutely nothing in the event of hostilities being declared. Weapons that have been moved out can be moved back quickly. What matters is where the weapons are targeted, not where they are based. It is significant that the Cristian Democrats in the Federal Republic have not shown any inclination to back those proposals.

Iran-Iraq War

Mr. Mikardo: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has made to the authorities in Iran and Iraq on the use of chemical warfare.

Mr. Renton: We take every suitable opportunity to express our views on the use of chemical weapons to the Iraqis and Iranians. My right hon. and learned Friend last raised the issue with the Iraqi Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Tariq Aziz, when he met him at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, on 24 September.

Mr. Mikardo: I am grateful for that reply. Is it not time to go beyond the presidential statements and guidelines to which the Foreign Secretary referred in reply to a previous question? Should we not be getting together with our friends and allies to find some way of stopping or reducing


the supply from Europe to either or both of those countries of chemical weapons, equipment to make them or equipment to adapt fertiliser factories to make them? Should we not be doing something instead of just talking?

Mr. Renton: It is a pleasure to find myself in agreement with the hon. Gentleman. He will know that at present we impose export controls on 10 chemicals which are capable of being used in the manufacture of lethal chemical agents. A longer warning list has been circulated to the chemical industry and traders, and similar measures have been taken by other industrialised countries. More important, as the hon. Gentleman knows, we have taken the lead at the conference on disarmament in Geneva of seeking a worldwide ban on the production and storing of chemical weapons. In that context we have tabled our initiative about challenge inspection and we look forward to discussing it with other countries in the months ahead. This is an area in which the United Kingdom is in the lead.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Will my hon. Friend press on with the Government's initiative to have a worldwide ban on chemical weapons? In particular, will he make representations to the Soviet Union that it should not assist any country in the middle east to develop its chemical warfare potential?

Mr. Renton: Yes, I can assure my hon. Friend that we are already in detailed discussion with the Soviet Union about some of the clauses in the regime for challenge inspection that we have tabled at Geneva. We shall continue to press the Soviets not to do anything to facilitate the export of ingredients which can be used in chemical weapon manufacturing.

Mr. Deakins: If industrial countries are not supplying chemical weapons or the means to make them to Iran or Iraq, does the Minister accept that they are getting the weapons from somewhere? Can we not widen our efforts and ensure that they cannot get those weapons from anywhere? Does he agree that even if we must raise the issue at the United Nations, we should do so?

Mr. Renton: Yes. The hon. Gentleman judges on a difficult point. The problem is that many chemical ingredients can be used either for genuine ordinary chemical manufacture or for the manufacture of dangerous chemical agents. In producing the warning list that is now circulated to the chemical industry we tried to

establish which chemicals were particularly dangerous in this area. We constantly consider the list and we shall do everything we can to make international export controls more effective prior to arranging a worldwide ban on chemical weapon production, which must be verifiable. That is the answer to the problem that the hon. Gentleman identified.

South Africa

Mr. John Carlisle: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he is yet satisfied that sufficient progress has been made by the South African Government towards the dismantling of apartheid to warrant the withdrawal of economic and other sanctions; and if he will make a statement.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mrs. Lynda Chalker): No, Sir. While we do not believe that general economic sanctions would be effective as a means to end apartheid, measures of the kind agreed by the Twelve on 16 September are an important means of signalling to the South African Government the urgent need for change.

Mr. Carlisle: Does my hon. Friend accept that it would be better to dismantle the apartheid system at a time of economic prosperity than at a time of unemployment, poverty and financial disaster, which the sanctions policy will bring? Will she reject the Barclays bank way of walking away from the problem and support BP's policy for far greater investment and prosperity for those of all races in South Africa?

Mrs. Chalker: The decision by Barclays bank was an entirely commercial decision for it. It is true that any weakening of the economy brings enormous suffering, particularly to the black South Africans. I must say that BP's ideas, and its intention to spend £30 million on community projects, represent a welcome initiative. There should be more. However, it should be realised that the South African Government have fenced themselves into a corner. Although they have changed some of the restrictive laws, they have sought to introduce new restrictions, such as defining the parameters for black settlement in urban areas. Until the apartheid system in South Africa is replaced by a system with which all South Africans can agree, we shall not see, in South Africa, further investment strength or, indeed, the peace for which we all long.

Rate Support Grant

Dr. John Cunningham: (by private notice) asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on his latest proposals for the rate support grant settlement for 1987–88.

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Nicholas Ridley): In response to the representations that I have received on the proposals that I made on 3 October, and in the light of new information affecting the data upon which grant is distributed, I have today announced revised proposals on which I am consulting local authorities afresh.

Dr. Cunningham: Is not this situation quite unprecedented? No previous Secretary of State has needed three consultation documents between July and December in order to make up his mind. Is that not an indictment of the Secretary of State's incompetence? Was not his attempt to try to sneak the information out by way of a written answer an act of political cowardice and a disgrace? Is not his reply an indictment of the appalling mess to which this Government have reduced local government finance?
As the right hon. Gentleman only put forward his second proposals in October, and gave local authorities barely three weeks in which to reply, why has he now changed his mind yet again? What is the purpose of the proposed changes? Which authorities will benefit? Is not the reality that the majority of authorities will lose under his new proposals? Are not the reasons really a combination of his own ineptitude and a political pay-off to his Tory friends in marginal seats?
Will the Secretary of State tell the House when we shall now learn of his final decisions? Does he still intend, for example, to abolish grant recycling which, according to the treasurer of Somerset county council, will reduce the extra grant that he is purporting to give local authorities by at least £400 million next year, and will result in higher rates for many millions of families? Does not this whole sorry story make nonsense of all the bluster and bravado that we had from the right hon. Gentleman in July?

Mr. Ridley: It is rich of the hon. Gentleman to quote precedent when sitting one away from him is the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) who, whenever he had proposals on a rate support grant settlement, came once to the House, in December, to answer a written parliamentary question stating what the Government's decision was. By contrast, this Government have consulted and we put forward a consultative paper on 3 October. We have listened to the results of that consultation and I now come forward with further proposals which, by precedent, have always been outlined by way of written parliamentary question. I shall listen to the results of further representations on these consultations. What an extraordinary example the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) wishes me to follow—of the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney's practice to slap it down on the table in December—take it or leave it and no consultation. I cannot accept that.
I shall make up my mind as to the final settlement when I have listened to consultations that may be received on the proposals that I am announcing this afternoon. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to study the document, copies are now

in the Vote Office as well as in the Library, and I have written to him giving him details. The Government are proceeding with their plans to end the recycling of grant, as I announced on 22 July. I think that he will find that this is fairer, for this reason. The latest data on populations, capital allocations and expenditure in 1986–87 and on rateable values of authorities make it clear that the basis of the 3 October settlement which I proposed has been altered by the fact that the data have changed, making those authorities that did badly in October do even worse. It seemed necessary to me to correct that imbalance.

Mr. John Heddle: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the consultation that he has had with hon. Members over the past months have been appreciated? Will he confirm that the outcome of his consultations will be that those underspending, prudent authorities will be able to spend more money, which is their due reward?

Mr. Ridley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, as I am to all hon. Gentlemen who came to see me to discuss the last proposals. I hope that the House will acknowledge that I have tried, as far as possible, to listen to what hon. Members have said, and to make the necessary changes. Again, we shall be ready to hear any hon. Member who wishes to make representations on behalf of his authority in the light of the new proposals.

Mr. Simon Hughes: Was the announcement that the Secretary of State made in July not one of relative principle compared with that of today, as he said then that it would not be possible to change the system in favour of the home counties without depriving the inner cities of moneys to which, under the Act, they were entitled? Are we not about to see, next month, a new form of gerrymander, the "Ridleymander", which is buying votes in the places where the right hon. Gentleman knows that his friends would otherwise lose seats because of the system set up under statute in 1980? Is not the real reason that the Secretary of State wants to know the outcome of the teachers' dispute settlement before he knows what local authorities will require to have in their budgets to spend in the forthcoming year?

Mr. Ridley: I had not intended to refer to the effects of the new proposals on the individual authorities. The hon. Gentleman accuses me of gerrymandering, but I can think of no reason, on that argument, why I should have provided extra money for the borough of Southwark, which is represented by the hon. Gentleman, and run by the Labour party. I do not see how one can gerrymander in favour of one's political opponents. The effect of the data is what the hon. Gentleman should study, and he will find that there are good reasons for the changes that I have suggested.

Mr. Jerry Hayes: First, may I welcome the sensitive and flexible approach which my right hon. Friend has adopted in this matter? I hope that the further consultations that he and his Department will be having will produce a result whereby inner-city areas will be aided and prudent shire authorities will be rewarded for their prudence. Secondly, may I disabuse him of the notion, if any of his officials care to press it upon him, that any delay will take the heat out of the argument, because I assure him that it will not?

Mr. Ridley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It has not been a matter of seeking to reward certain authorities and penalise others. I have to operate within the 1980 Act and ensure that I distribute the grant in accordance with the formula on a basis which is best defensible. What makes the difference between October and now is the different information on the grant likely to be received, due to changes in rateable values and other such matters which have to be taken into account, and the result is different from that which I thought was fair.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must take account of the fact that this is an Opposition day. There is an important debate to follow and I shall take two more questions from either side of the Chamber.

Mr. Allan Roberts: May I offer the Secretary of State some sympathy for having inherited an entirely unworkable rate support grant system from the right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Jenkin) and having to make a statement which he hoped would give extra money to the local authorities in some of his hon. Friend's marginal constituencies? He has had to face a rebellion that has been led by his right hon. Friend the Member for Wanstead and Woodford, who is campaigning against the difficulties which the Secretary of State faced in a system which he inherited. Is it not true that the system that was honed by previous Tory Secretaries of State cannot be made to give Tory authorities extra moneys and to take moneys away from Labour authorities in the way that was hoped? There has been a Back-Bench rebellion—

Mr. Speaker: Briefly.

Mr. Roberts: —by his hon. Friends which has resulted in the Secretary of State rethinking how he can fiddle the system to enable him to take moneys away from Labour authorities to give them to authorities in Tory marginal seats.

Mr. Ridley: If the hon. Gentleman feels as he says he does, I look forward to his presence in the Government Lobby after we have introduced legislation to abolish the rating system and replace it with a fairer system.

Mr. David Madel: In considering alterations to the original proposals, may I express the hope to my right hon. Friend that what is now proposed will help alleviate some of the problems that Bedfordshire has had over rates for some time?

Mr. Ridley: I think it best that my hon. Friend studies the document that is now in the Vote Office. It is too difficult to memorise the details of every authority, but I

think that he will find that there is some help for Bedfordshire. Some counties that are run impeccably well by the finest Conservative councillors do not benefit from the proposals that I am putting forward.

Mr. William O'Brien: As this is the season of consultation, will the Secretary of State have consultations with the Secretary of State for Transport to sort out the problem which they have caused for the West Yorkshire transport authority? The Department of Transport is saying that its expenditure should be £58 million and the Department of the Environment is saying that it should be £37 million, thereby making the authority an overspender. There is a grant from the Department of less than £8 million, which is unfair to the ratepayers and travellers of west Yorkshire. Will the right hon. Gentleman have consultaions with the transport authority to sort out the mess in which west Yorkshire has been placed, because of this misunderstanding?

Mr. Ridley: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport and I are in total accord about all matters. We think exactly the same. There is no need to consult each other because we always agree about everything. The hon. Gentleman has mentioned sums for transport in west Yorkshire which seem enormous in relation to need in that area.

Sir David Price: Is my right hon. Friend aware that because of the bizarre, complicated and almost byzantine nature of the calculations involved in the rate support grant system, he is to be congratulated on introducing a consultative phase, which we have never had before? That is entirely to his credit. As a result of consultation, how has Hampshire done?

Mr. Ridley: I must agree entirely with my hon. Friend about the bizarre and complex nature of the system that we seek to operate.

Hon. Members: It's your system.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Ridley: The House seems to agree about the bizarreness and complexity of the system. I am sure that all hon. Members would wish to change to a new system that takes away rateable value as one of the bases from which the rate support grant settlement is derived. I ask my hon. Friend to examine the paper in relation to Hampshire. He will find that there is some benefit for Hampshire ratepayers in what is proposed.

Several Hon. Members: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall take one at a time.

Points of Order

Mr. James Wallace: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will recall that, at this time yesterday, a resolution of the House remitted to the Scottish Grand Committee the subject of agriculture and fisheries. That subject is long overdue for discussion by the Scottish Grand Committee. It is, of course, necessary, under Standing Order No. 94, for a further resolution of the House to be passed before the matter can be debated in Edinburgh at 10.30 on a Monday morning. The Government proposed to debate this matter next Monday morning, although the motion to that effect was objected to last night by my right hon. Friend the leader of the Liberal party, on the ground that insufficient notice had been given to hon. Members of this meeting next week. Last night, a card was sent to Scottish Members advising them of the meeting next Monday, before a motion had been passed by the House. We know that the Government have a large majority, but surely it is presumptuous for the business of the House to be assumed before it comes to pass.

Mr. Speaker: I thank the hon. Gentleman for having given me notice of this matter. It has enabled me to examine it. A mistake was made in the Committee Office. Cards were sent out, warning Members. It was the intention to put on those cards the words, "dependent upon the House passing the necessary resolution." I apologise to the House.

Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Bearing in mind the importance of the subject that has just been raised in a private notice question and the fact that it should have been the Government's duty to come to the House with a statement and not rest on the back of a private notice question, and bearing in mind the fact that that £800 million—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: I am on a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is not. He is trying to raise a question—

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: Not at all.

Mr. Speaker: Order.—that he might have asked if I had called him. The House knows that a private notice question is an extension of Question Time. We have spent the best part of 15 minutes on it.

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: Yes, but Mr. Speaker——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am sorry, but I cannot allow any further time.

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: You gave 12 minutes to——

Mr. Speaker: Order!

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: You have given half a minute——

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Deakins.

Mr. Eric Deakins: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am glad to note that, for my point of order, which is a genuine one, the Chief Whips, the Leader of the House, and my right hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House are present.
My point of order relates to the form of Foreign Office questions. As you will know, Mr. Speaker, for the past year, there has been an experiment whereby the separate slot for Common Market questions was merged into Foreign Office questions. The decision to have that experiment was controversial, and a number of hon. Members disagreed with it. The experiment was confirmed to me and others, very courteously, in writing by the Leader of the House at the end of last Session and in a written answer. We note from today's Foreign Office questions that not a single question about the Common Market was reached. The confirmation of the experiment, which is now to be made permanent, means that we shall no longer have any separate slot in the proceedings of the House for any questions whatever on the Common Market. They will be merged with all other questions. That is a matter of controversy for all hon. Members. That decision was arranged by the usual channels.
The usual channels on this occasion—I cannot speak for other occasions—consisted solely of the Government and the official Opposition. The Liberal party, the Official Ulster Unionists and, I think, the Scottish National party, were not consulted. Therefore, I believe that the other minority parties were not consulted. So far as your duty to Back-Benchers is concerned Mr. Speaker, should you not ensure that, in future, when such decisions are made on matters of interest to all hon. Members, all parties are consulted through the usual channels?

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. These are not matters for me, as the hon. Member knows. They are traditionally matters for discussion between the usual channels. What the usual channels change they can change again. The hon. Member has made his point.

Mr. John Carlisle: On a point of order which arises out of questions, Mr. Speaker. I apologise for the fact that I was not here earlier when the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes)—I apologise for reading—mentioned my name and that of my former research assistant. May I inform you, Sir, that the hon. Gentleman's question was out of order because that man——

Mr. Speaker: Order. It was not out of order.

Mr. Carlisle: May I ask for your opinion, Sir?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member should ask my opinion on a matter on which I can rule.

Mr. Carlisle: I crave your indulgence, Sir, and ask for your opinion whether the hon. Gentleman's question was in order, because that man, Mr. David Hoile, is not now in my employ as my research assistant.

Mr. Speaker: The question was in order.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. On Monday you gave a substantive reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) and me about possible interference with the telephones of Members of Parliament. Have you been able to make any progress?

Mr. Speaker: I am looking into the matter. I shall write to the hon. Member.

Mr. Eric Forth: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Word has reached me that, not unusually, the Labour party feels that it is unable to vote on the motions on today's Order Paper. Is it possible——

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is patently not a matter for me.

Mr. Forth: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. It is not a matter for me.

Opposition Day

[3RD ALLOTED DAY]

Security Services (Commission)

Mr. Speaker: We now move to the important debate on the motion in the names of the leaders of the alliance parties. I must announce to the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Mr. David Owen: I beg to move,
That this House believes that it is desirable that a Joint Committee of both Houses, to be known as the Special Commission on the Security Services, be appointed, and that the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records.
We all know that debates on the security services involve issues that are not easy to handle. It might help the House if I try to spell out what may well be common ground on some of the issues. At a time when there is intense terrorist activity worldwide, let alone the problems of East-West relations, we need our security services, and they have to operate with a high degree of secrecy.
It has hitherto always been accepted in the House that it is an inappropriate mechanism to call the security services to account by a systematic question and answer exchange on the Floor of the House. I believe that that is still the position. However, there has been growing concern that it is no longer possible, in view of the revelations concerning the security services, for Parliament to remain the only forum in the nation that is not discussing some of these questions. It is bizarre when the newspapers, television and radio are frequently discussing these issues in considerable detail but there is no mechanism for parliamentary scrutiny.
I am sorry that the Prime Minister is not in her place, because I wish to raise certain issues. It is fair to say that it was the Prime Minister who, for understandable reasons, in 1979 broke with the precedent of not revealing information about the security services. The situation is exceptional. The Blunt case was, by any standard, an issue on which the nation would not have accepted that there should be no discussion in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister keeps quoting precedent and saying that she is abiding by it, but she must face the fact that she was the first Prime Minister to come to the Floor of the House of Commons to reveal so much information. The Prime and Bettaney cases followed and, again, more information was revealed than was previously the practice.
As in the United States and in most democratic countries, in this country more and more people have realised that the old system of totally trusting the Ministers concerned will not satisfy Parliament or the wider public. There is a strong case for us devising a mechanism whereby the House can feel confident that the security services are scrutinised and at the same time it can protect the essential confidentiality and secrecy of much of their activity. It is because of that that we have tabled this motion.
The motion is deliberately designed to involve Members of both Houses. Given the range of experience, there is positive merit in such a commission having its


membership drawn from this House as well as from the House of Lords. That would also allow this House, if we thought it prudent, to have a commission chairman who was not a party political figure, or perhaps to appoint somebody who was obviously no longer in the front line of party politics—a former Prime Minister, for example.
It is also a virtue to have the potential to involve senior service men from the House of Lords or senior civil servants. A similar thought must have passed through the mind of the Government when somewhat reluctantly they accepted during the Falklands crisis the principle of having an examination to see what had gone wrong. They did that by establishing the Franks committee. The membership of that committee was drawn from the House of Commons and the House of Lords and also contained somebody from outside who at the time of appointment was not a member of the Privy Council but was made a member. That committee had available to it all forms of intelligence, security reports and internal working documents of Government, and for that reason it was thought right that its members should be Privy Councillors.
We strongly believe that the members of the commission we propose should be Privy Councillors. That is because it has hitherto been accepted that Members of Parliament are not positively vetted and that membership of the Privy Council enables one to have access to confidential information. That has been accepted by our friends and allies. We do not specifically mention that in the motion because we think it sensible that the House should be able to appoint to such a body someone who is not a Privy Councillor but who, with the agreement of the Prime Minister, may become one on appointment to this commission. That would follow precedent. That may go some way towards avoiding the charge that people who would serve would only be former Ministers or people who, if you like, are "part of the club" or "in the know". If the Leader of the Opposition or the leader of any of the other parties wished to nominate somebody who had not served in government or was not a Privy Councillor, they would be free to do so, provided there was some understanding of the nominee's overall acceptability.
Such a structure would command a good deal of support in all parts of the House, although I do not expect that to be reflected in the Lobbies at the end of this debate. Such a commission will come; the only question is when. The sooner it comes, the less will some quite serious information be divulged that is damaging to the security services. That happens because of the way we presently conduct our proceedings. Under such a system, we will not abuse the Order Paper by naming individuals in the way that has been done in recent weeks. Judging from the amendment that has been tabled, the Home Secretary does not accept this motion, but I hope that he will ponder hard on the questions that I have posed.

Mr. Ray Whitney: The right hon. Gentleman mentioned Bettaney. How would the mechanism that he proposes prevent the recruitment of someone like Bettaney?

Dr. Owen: It would not have prevented his recruitment; the mere fact of having a scrutinising committee will not prevent some people from indulging in treachery. The recruitment procedures to MI5 were seriously defective and successive Prime Ministers, including the right hon.

Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan), to his great credit, considerably tightened the procedures. MI5 and its recruitment has been causing worry for some time, but I believe that it is now substantially better. Although we hear all about the problems associated with the security services, it is worth reminding the House that it has had some outstanding successes, including not only Penkovsky but the recent defection of somebody very high up in the KGB who was in London for a long time. Those were considerable successes.
I would like to consider the reasons for the present anxiety, which of course prompts this pressure, although I have been advocating this course now for several years. I do not advocate the appointment of this commission purely and simply because of recent incidents. I do not believe that some of the questions that have been raised publicly would be answered by such a Select Committee. They will have to be answered in another forum.
It is common ground that Mr. Peter Wright has betrayed the trust of his employers and the trust of this country. I believe that any Government would have been extremely disturbed by Mr. Peter Wright briefing Mr. Chapman Pincher for his book in 1981 and should have been considerably concerned about the television programme broadcast by Granada in July 1984. That was a flagrant breach of Mr. Peter Wright's obligations and agreements and led him to write his own book. Nothing that I say or have said is meant in any way to underwrite the conduct of Mr. Peter Wright. His conduct has been utterly disgraceful.
The Government were under considerable pressure to take the court action they have taken in Sydney. Those of us who would support the action are entitled to ask the Government why they did not take action against Mr. Peter Wright when they knew that he was the prime source of Mr. Chapman Pincher's book in 1981. This is not an easy matter for the Home Secretary. However, I put this point to him directly, as allegations have now been made in many newspapers, and most recently and clearly in the Sunday Times.
It is claimed that MI5 gained possession of the book six weeks in advance of its publication by the use of illegal methods. That raises a number of questions. First, were illegal methods used? If the Home Secretary refuses to answer that, can he tell the House what ministerial approval has to take place before MI5 can act illegally? We have asked for assurances about ministerial control over telephone tapping and interceptions. We recognise that such action must be taken and that sometimes extraordinary actions are necessary to protect the state. However, we want to know, and are entitled to know, whether any such actions are given the specific authorisation, in this case, of the Home Secretary. We are entitled to know that procedure.
A Select Committee would, in my view, be a valuable scrutiniser of those issues to examine what is happening and exercise democratic control. Can the Home Secretary tell us why, in 1981, the Attorney-General was not involved in the decision whether to take action against Mr. Peter Wright and Mr. Chapman Pincher? Quite bluntly, the distinction between a civil and criminal offence does not stand up. Procedures for Ministers are quite clear on this matter and they have applied for successive Governments.
If an issue of law is involved which has considerable repercussions through the governmental machine—and


no one can doubt that the decision not to prosecute Mr. Chapman Pincher and Mr. Peter Wright has had very considerable repercussions—the Attorney-General should have been involved. Of course, the Attorney-General is right to make the distinction that in a criminal charge he, and he alone, is responsible for the decision. He is the principal Law Officer of the Government and as principal Law Officer he should have been involved in 1981. Was his exclusion deliberate? If so, did that happen because illegal action had taken place? It would not be the first time that the Attorney-General has heard of illegal action. I cannot really understand why that should be the reason. Or did the Government feel that he was likely to ask for prosecution and the then Prime Minister and the Home Secretary did not wish to face a conflict of advice from the Attorney-General. These are serious and legitimate points to raise.

Mr. Ian Gow: The right hon. Gentleman told the House that in his view action should have been taken against Mr. Wright five years ago in 1981. As Mr. Wright was then living outside this jurisdiction, how could any action have been taken to prevent publication of Mr. Chapman Pincher's book and how could a prosecution have been effective as Mr. Wright was living outside our jurisdiction?

Dr. Owen: I linked Mr. Chapman Pincher and Mr. Peter Wright. For the reasons that the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) has described, it might have been difficult to take an immediate action against Peter Wright. However, Mr. Wright has been to this country since 1981. Indeed, in 1984 he appeared in a television programme which will be repeated by Granada tonight. Having read the transcript of that programme, I am amazed that it will be broadcast again—Granada states—without the Government making any formal challenge or representation against it.—[HON. MEMBERS: "What about Tebbit?"] What the chairman of the Conservative party should do is immaterial to the question.
Why did the then Home Secretary or the Prime Minister not take action? I consider that the Granada programme is more devastating because there is no doubt that Mr. Peter Wright was in this country.
I have already raised the specific points that I wished to raise about MI5. However, other allegations are in circulation about what may or may not emerge from the Sydney case. I shall not deal with the question of the former Prime Minister, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx. That will be dealt with by my right hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Jenkins)—if he catches your eye, Mr. Speaker—who was Home Secretary during some of the period to which these matters relate.
I would like to raise one or two points about the case in Sydney. A reporter asked me whether I would have taken action. I suspect that I would have taken action. I was responsible for acquiescing in the decision of the then Attorney-General over the ABC trial. In retrospect, that was a mistake. Far more information came out as a result of that litigation than any of us thought possible.
We must learn from those cases and from some of the problems that have resulted from legal action. We should still be learning. "Farce" is the word most often used to describe what is happening in Sydney. The case has already damaged the reputation of a very senior and hitherto well-respected civil servant, the Cabinet

Secretary. It has done a great deal of harm to the standing of the Attorney-General, although I think that many people admire the way in which he was determined that the truth should come out; when he discovered that his name had been called in aid over the original decision not to prosecute, he must have insisted that his name was cleared. All credit to him for that.
The case has not done the Government any good. However, to be honest, I do not believe that the great British public will take it out on the Government in party politics. I think that they are rather enjoying this running farce. The atmosphere is helped because we are doing well against the Australians in cricket. Indeed, the judge's florid turn of phrase may mean that the Government will have some legal redress on appeal.
How long will this rolling farce go on? How many more facts are likely to be revealed? One of the skills of politics is to know when to cut one's losses—[Interruption.] We are all sorry that the Leader of the Opposition is not with us today. We understand that he is heavily engaged with speaking engagements—that is, if people are prepared to turn up at them—on the other side of the Atlantic.
We also regret the absence of the Prime Minister, which is very revealing.

Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: Where is the Attorney-General?

Dr. Owen: The Prime Minister gave the impression yesterday that she intended to withdraw the normal rights of consultation with the Leader of the Opposition. Since then, there have been periodic briefings from No. 10 about the position. I find it bizarre that the Leader of the Opposition should have telephoned defence counsel in a case involving the Crown, but I take the view that he is more a fool than a knave. To pretend that that is a major issue which justifies breaking the conventions on security issues—[Interruption.] It is sad that the Leader of the Opposition is not present to justify his own actions and make a six-page personal statement. Nevertheless, I ask the Home Secretary to make it clear that the Government have no intention of acting in such a naive and juvenile way. It would be ludicrous to break the conventions on such scant grounds. It is for the Leader of the Opposition to justify his own actions, but it is in all our interests that security matters should not become an issue of party conflict and division—as, sadly, defence matters have become in recent times.
My final plea is to the Home Secretary and to all in the House who value the bipartisan tradition on security services. Let us all learn from what has happened in the greater openness and democracy of the past few years. It is not sustainable for the House of Commons to have no role in scrutinising the Executive on these matters. The Prime Minister must be told by the few members of the Conservative party—I suspect that they are very few—to whom she is prepared to listen that she must come off it and allow Parliament to exercise its proper function of scrutinising the security services. I believe that the form of inquiry that we have outlined, involving both Houses of Parliament and the maintenance of the bipartisan concept, is the right way forward, and the sooner it is achieved, the better.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hurd): I beg to move, to leave out from 'House' to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
'has full confidence in the present arrangements whereby the Security Service is responsible to Ministers.'
The right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) has called for a special commission to oversee what he has described as the security services. Although we do not accept his proposal, it is entirely reasonable that it should be made, as it has been in the past and no doubt will be in the future. Having listened to the right hon. Gentleman, I cannot say that I am much clearer as to what he envisages the proposed body doing and what it might actually achieve, but there may be other occasions on which that can be discussed in greater detail.
The right hon. Gentleman acknowledged that the timing of his motion had a lot to do with the present case in Australia. I wish to deal seriously with the underlying points that he made because they deserve to be taken seriously, but the House will appreciate that I cannot enter into argument about the progress of the case in Australia. Every Home Secretary, like every Prime Minister, works under the general constraint that we do not answer questions, however important, about the work of the Security Service. That is not new—it reflects the accepted practice of successive Governments. More particularly, we cannot answer questions currently being discussed in the court case in Australia.
You, Mr. Speaker, have ruled that these proceedings do not rate as sub judice in terms of the rules of the House, but it is absolutely clear that the Government are sub judice in that we are under the judge in Australia as plaintiff in his court. There can thus be no doubt that any answers or observations given in the House could be seen by the Australian court as an attempt to influence it or to interfere with the judicial process there.
My reply to the right hon. Gentleman's questions about that case, therefore, must be that so long as the case remains before the Australian court—despite the right hon. Gentleman's comments, it may be for some time yet—the Government must deny themselves the opportunity to deal faithfully with the extraordinary mass of stories to which the case has given rise. Faced with such a high proportion of nonsense, there are many comments that we should dearly like to make—comments which we may be free to make one day, but because of the continuing case in Australia that day is emphatically not today.

Mr. David Winnick: Even if I do not agree with the Home Secretary's comments about the case in Australia, the case in Ireland is certainly no longer sub judice. What purpose was served by trying to ban a book explaining events which took place during the last war, more than 40 years ago? Do not the Home Secretary and the Attorney-General realise how farcical it seemed to many people in Britain? Personally, I am very pleased at the decision reached by the Dublin court.

Mr. Hurd: My right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General has made clear the basis on which that injunction was sought, which was exactly the same basis—the principle of confidentiality—as led to the action in Australia.

Mr. Tony Benn: What national interest is served by concealing from Parliament and the public the

knowledge that the Prime Minister of the day, then Harold Wilson, had his offices and telephones intercepted and his homes burgled by the security services which were supposed to be accountable to him? What public interest makes it necessary to conceal that fact, which emerges in Mr. Wright's book and bears on the central question of whether the security services are under ministerial control?

Mr. Hurd: That was directly dealt with by the Prime Minister of the day, the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan), and I understand that further comments are to be made by the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Jenkins).
If my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has anything to add he will be able to do so when he winds up. [HON. MEMBERS: "That is passing the buck."] The matter was thoroughly dealt with by those responsible at the time.
The right hon. Member for Devonport accepts, as all serious people must accept, the need for a Security Service to help protect Britain. I sometimes become a little weary of those worldly-wise but ignorant people who argue that Britain no longer has any secrets to protect and therefore no longer needs a Security Service. There remains a considerable risk of espionage. Moreover—this must always be in the mind of any Home Secretary—the threat of domestic and international terrorism is greater than ever before. The Security Service is an essential part of the means whereby we seek to protect the British people from terrorism. Through force of circumstances, far from declining, that role has substantially increased.
Still following the right hon. Gentleman's argument, the Security Service must be secretive to be effective. We shall not prevent arms going to the IRA or identify terrorists in this country, and, crucially, our friends and allies around the world will not give us secret information of their own which may be necessary for our protection, if the Security Service is not properly and effectively secretive about operational matters. The Security Service is not an ornament—it is a crucial means of protecting and defending our citizens and their freedom.
If it is necessary, legitimate and, indeed, fundamental for the Security Service to preserve a proper secrecy about its methods of operation or about the procedures and people from whom it obtains information, something else that is important follows from that. There must be a binding obligation on members of the Security Service—not just for the period when they are in the service but for the rest of their lives—not to disclose what was entrusted to them on a confidential basis. We are talking here not about some narrow concept of the employer's interest but about something wider—the interests of the nation as a whole, which may be damaged if a person breaks the confidentiality by which he knew that the was bound for ever when he took up the employment.
This principle, of course, as the Prime Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General made clear, lies at the heart of our proceedings against Mr. Wright. That is the only comment I can make today about the case. In real life and in common sense, there is a distinction between books written entirely by outsiders and books written by members or former members of the Security Service who, by overtly providing their own information, give it an appearance of authenticity that no


outsider can pretend to do. Thus, the secrecy of operations and, in particular, the requirement of confidentiality from members of the service, are crucial to its effectiveness.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: As it is clear that, over the years, Mr. Pincher has been fed classified information on the Security Service by a series of MI5 officers, will the Home Secretary tell us whether he believes the relationship that exists between Mr. Pincher and officers in the security services is defendable in every possible way?

Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman says, from information given by his contacts, things that he believes are clear. I cannot go beyond what I have said—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] Of course I cannot go beyond what I have already said about the Australian case and the proceedings in it.

Mr. Tony Banks: rose——

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Is it a healthy relationship?

Mr. Hurd: I must get on to the thesis of the right hon. Member for Devonport.
As I said, the secrecy of operations, and in particular the requirement of confidentiality, are thus crucial to the effectiveness of the Security Service. Yet we live in a democratic society where Parliament is sovereign. It would not be accepted—and it is not my argument—that secrecy should mean the total isolation of the Security Service from all our democratic institutions. There must be some means of ensuring oversight and responsibility. There must be some way of ensuring that the resources and opportunities provided for the Security Service are used for the national good. That is why the responsibility for those matters mainly lies with the Home Secretary of the day, and there are several of my predecessors in the Chamber at the moment. I know something about how they and others have approached that responsibility, and I want to explain what it means to me, in 1986.
Of course, I cannot always respond with evidence about the discharge of this responsibility for the Security Service, and some regard that as blunting that responsibility. But, in practice—as my predecessors would confirm—the Home Secretary must take that responsibility very seriously as it involves the highest trust for the protection and safety of our country.
The Security Service operates under the published directive issued in 1952 to the director general by the then Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe. That can be found in Lord Denning's report and it still applies today. The directive makes the director general personally responsible to the Home Secretary for the proper and efficient implementation of the tasks set out in the directive. It is mainly through that relationship that ministerial control is exercised. The director-general is expected to seek direction and guidance from the Home Secretary as to the way the service goes about its business.
There is one particular area in which the Home Secretary exercises detailed control. That is when an interception warrant is sought, when of course the Home Secretary must be given sufficient supporting information for him to judge whether the application comes within the statutory criteria. But in general, the Home Secretary is not concerned with particular cases, as paragraph 6 of the directive makes clear:
Ministers do not concern themselves with detailed information which may be obtained by the Security Service

in particular cases, but are furnished with such information only as may be necessary for the determination of any issue on which guidance is sought.
There are good reasons for that policy. The Security Service is not—contrary to what is sometimes alleged—in the business of obtaining information on behalf of the Government. It is there to protect the state against external and internal dangers, and must, as the directive makes clear, do that in a way that avoids any suggestion that it is concerned with any matter other than the defence of the realm as a whole. There must be no political bias or influence in its work. That is why the detailed control of Security Service work must be for the director general. If his judgment is wrong, he must answer to the Home Secretary.
I believe that it is right that the Home Secretary should have no role in that detailed control of the service, but it is part of his job to be well informed about what that service is doing, its priorities, how it is deploying its resources and the overall effectiveness and efficiency of its operations. It is part of the responsibility of the Home Secretary—here again, I think that I shall carry my predecessors with me—to receive reports, ask questions, meet the director-general, visit the Security Service and meet members of its staff. My regard for the dedicated and skilful work of that service. I am glad that the right hon. Member for Devonport referred to its successes—and my confidence in the care with which its members respect the terms of the published directive are thus based on personal knowledge and scrutiny.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: If it is part of the Home Secretary's business to ask questions, does he think it is his business to ask why Lord Rothschild should send an air fare to someone to come from Australia to see him? Is that the kind of question that the Home Secretary would think it proper to ask?

Mr. Hurd: It is a question that would occur to the Home Secretary of the day to ask, but it is certanly not a question that can be answered in the House this afternoon.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: The right hon. Gentleman never answers.

Mr. Hurd: It is also well established that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister signally concerns herself, as have her predecessors, with major security service matters. The Maxwell Fyfe directive provides that the director-general may approach the Prime Minister on matters of supreme importance and delicacy. My right hon. Friend spelt out that role, in her statement on the Blunt case on 21 November 1979, by stressing the Home Secretary's responsibility to inform the Prime Minister, or make sure that the Prime Minister is informed, in that type of case. She added that, in practice, both the Home Secretary and she make a point of keeping in close touch with the director-general.
It is inevitable that in restless times those arrangements should be questioned. The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the director-general of the Security Service sit inside the barrier of secrecy that is essential for the work of that service.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Along with Mr. Pincher.

Mr. Hurd: The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) is out of his depth when the argument reaches the kind of level to which the right hon. Member for Devonport has moved it.
The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary—I must repeat this to avoid losing the train of the argument—and the director-general sit inside the necessary barrier of secrecy. Of course, there are some who want to destroy the barrier and the Security Service with it, and no concessions will satisfy them. But there are others, like the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport, who accept the need for the barrier, as he specifically did today, but want in some way to send their own representatives, or the representatives of Parliament, to take up positions inside the barrier alongside the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. That is the dilemma. I think that we must be a little wary of supposing that foreign models will automatically provide a satisfactory way of doing that.
For example, our system would simply not be feasible in the United States because there is no way in the United States in which a member of the Administration could be responsible to Congress in the same way as the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are responsible to this House, as this debate shows. The Americans have devised their own system to suit their own constitutional circumstances and we should not suppose that those can be successfully transplanted. So it is with each of the democracies that are in a comparable position. I have to say that there are at present particular difficulties here with our political system, to which I must return before I sit down.

Mr. Simon Hughes: rose——

Mr. Hurd: I must get on, as I have given way quite freely and this is a short debate.
Different models have been suggested for some form of external review body and the right hon. Member for Devonport skated quickly over several of them. No doubt other right hon. and hon. Members will also make such suggestions.
It is not easy to discuss these matters in a sensible way under the shadow of a particular case, and it may well be that the House will want to return to the same subject in a calmer atmosphere. Sometimes it is suggested that there should be a Select Committee of senior Privy Councillors who would form this body. Sometimes it is suggested that a judicial body is needed, perhaps on the lines that we have already established under the Interception of Communications Act 1985, for that aspect of security work. Sometimes it is suggested that the role of the existing Security Commission should be expanded.
The Security Commission has been in existence for more than 20 years. Under its terms of reference, it can investigate and report upon any failures of security arrangements and advise whether any changes in those arrangements are necessary or desirable. But the Security Commission is a panel of people who are called upon ad hoc to report. They do not attempt to provide a continuous monitoring of the Security Service, nor does their role touch upon the central issue in today's debate—the relationship between Ministers and Parliament on Security Service matters. Any change in their role in that direction would be fairly fundamental and would call into question the present membership and procedures of the Security Commission.
It seems to me that, before agreeing to any such external review body, the Government and the House would need

to satisfy themselves that the body would pass three tests. First, it would need to preserve effectively the necessary secrecy—and confidence among our allies in that secrecy—of the operations of the Security Service. Secondly, it would need to increase the confidence felt by this House and by the public in the Security Service; Otherwise there would be no point in making the change. Thirdly, I would need to avoid blunting or diminishing the personal and clear responsibilities of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to this House.
It is perhaps natural that I should feel it necessary to stress this last point. The difficulties of running a Security Service in a democratic society are sufficiently great without installing at the heart of that service a constitutional contradiction. I have spoken about the way in which the Home Secretary has to approach this question of the detailed control of the Security Service. It is not easy to see how an external review boy could become involved in that detailed control. But if it did not, its credibility among its strongest partisans would quickly weaken.
The main problem is that there is bound to be a barrier of secrecy between the Security Service and the general public. That is inevitable if the Security Service is to be any good at all. A review body has to be on one side of that barrier or the other. If it is inside the barrier, it can certainly probe and monitor, although there remains the difficulty of clashes between its responsibility and that of the Home Secretary. But if it is inside the barrier, it cannot communicate its findings convincingly to those who remain outside.
If, on the other hand, the review body is outside the barrier looking in, it will of course have great difficulty in satisfying itself that it is able to carry out its task, because it will not have access to the material that most people would judge to be necessary if it was to carry out that task successfully.

Dr. Owen: The right hon. Gentleman has used the phrase "constitutional contradiction", and I have great difficulty following that aspect of his argument. However, the House of Commons has already gone across one of the barriers in relation to defence, when it was fiercely held that there could not be a Defence Select Committee. I know that is not such a sensitive issue, but we have gone across that barrier very well and that Select Committee has been given classified information. We have also gone across the barrier in relation to the Foreign Office and diplomacy, even though it was argued that that barrier could not be crossed. Surely those two precedents establish the momentum to cross this rather more difficult barrier in a specifically devised way.

Mr. Hurd: It is a much more difficult barrier. I also believe that the kind of role that the right hon. Gentleman is advocating is different from that of the other bodies that he mentioned. That is the crucial question to which, because of time, he has been unable to address himself, and the House would need to address itself very clearly to it before it made any change.
From what I have said, I hope that the House will recognise that I do not see the present arrangements as static. Indeed, there has been greater movement on this matter and greater openness under this Government than probably at any time ever before. On 21 November 1979, as has already been pointed out, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made a statement about the Blunt case


—a fact of which previous Governments had been aware but had not informed Parliament. During the debate, the Prime Minister spelt out more clearly the arrangements under which the Director General of the security service reported to and consulted the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister.
Again, on 26 March 1981, during the debate on the security implications of the Chapman Pincher book "Their Trade is Treachery", my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister commented on the positive vetting arrangements and indicated that she had asked the Security Commission to review the security procedures and practices followed in the public service and to consider what, if any, changes were required.

Mr. Tony Banks: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hurd: No, I must get on.
In 1983 the Security Commission, in connection with this and other inquiries—particularly the case of Geoffrey Prime—made a number of suggestions for improving the positive vetting procedures. The Government came to Parliament and secured approval for the Interception of Communications Act 1985. For the first time this provided a statutory and public framework for authorising practices of interception of communications carried out under the authority of Ministers of successive Governments for many years. That Act made unauthorised interception a criminal offence and for the first time gave people a statutory remedy by appeal to a tribunal.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister then reported to Parliament on the results of the inquiry by the Security Commission into Bettaney, and in her statement gave an account of the Security Commission's criticisms and recommendations on management of the security service. She announced acceptance of the Security Commission's recommendations for changes in the positive vetting procedures in the service. She said that she and the Home Secretary were determined to see that action was taken to remedy management weaknesses within the Security Service. The present director-general has, with my encouragement, devoted a major part of his time to that management task, especially the personnel arrangements.
As a result, the director-general earlier this year put forward to me and the Prime Minister a report on changes in the organisation and management of the Security Service. The Prime Minister made that report available to the Security Commission. All concerned have been impressed with the considerable amount of thought and effort which the Security Service has devoted to dealing with the problems identified by the Security Commission during its inquiry into the Bettaney case. The Security Commission has informed my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister of its approval of the more open style of management which the director-general has introduced throughout the service and the changes in procedure affecting the appraisal, posting and promotion of staff. That is an important point in which several hon. Members have been interested.
The Security Commission also noted with approval that the vetting procedures were being improved following the recruitment of more investigating officers and that the division of responsibility between line management and the specialist personnel managers had been tackled and

clarified. The Security Commission considers that the director-general is to be congratulated on the way that he has tackled the problems identified in its report following its inquiry into the case of Mr. Bettaney.

Mr. A. J. Beith: In the statement to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, the Prime Minister indicated that, along with the director-general, she would be looking into ways in which internal outlets could be found for the expression of grievances and anxieties by individual members of the service. As that was the source of some of the problems, will the Home Secretary say whether he believes that that problem has been dealt with?

Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman is entirely accurate in what he says. Discussions on that important point are still going on.

Mr. Paddy Ashdown: rose——

Mr. Hurd: I have been quite generous in giving way, and I am coming to a close.
I hope that I have said enough to show that the principle of ministerial responsibility, which under this Government has been adapting itself to particular events and situations, continues to provide a sound model—the best model—for the Security Service. We are not at present persuaded that any of the alternative models on offer would provide marked advantages.
There is a particular reason for that which I must mention. In most of the countries which face a similar problem there is a wide consensus across the political spectrum about the essentials of national defence and national security. This is, of course, true in the United States. It is absolutely compatible with periods such as the present when there is very sharp criticism of the Administration on particular issues, as we see in Washington at the moment. But there is no questioning of the fundamentals of United States defence and security policy any more than there is questioning among the parties of the fundamentals in Canada, Australia or the principal countries in Europe. Unfortunately, that is not the position in the United Kingdom today.
As the right hon. Member for Devonport said, the Leader of the Opposition is at present in the United States, and he is there in the middle of a parliamentary Session because he feels the need to explain to Republicans and Democrats alike why he has led the Labour party outside the consensus. He is finding it hard going, just as everyone would expect, because most people can see the overwhelming advantage of preserving a common understanding among all the principal political figures in a country about the fundamentals—not the details—of defence and security.
For our part we have tried to preserve that understanding. I refer again, as has been done several times, to the support that we gave in Opposition to the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) when he decided to deport Mr. Agee and Mr. Hosenball.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: The Home Secretary is right. On that occasion those two men left the country under the requirement of Immigration Act 1971, not the Official Secrets Act. My 37 colleagues who expressed anxiety about the matter were concerned about the procedures that I used, not about the details of the matter.

Mr. Hurd: The right hon. Gentleman became involved in a major row. As Home Secretary, he pleaded national security as the reason for his action. The Opposition supported him because of that but several of his own supporters failed to support him. That is in vivid contrast to the Opposition's handling of the Wright case.
I do not wish to discuss the matter further. I have read carefully the long statement issued, to my surprise, by the Leader of the Opposition on Friday. I have also read what Mr. Turnbull is reported to have said about their exchanges. For two years, I was in charge of the Leader of the Opposition's office when the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) led the Conservative party. It is inconceivable that my right hon. Friend would have authorised or allowed me to enter into that sort of alliance or liaison with a lawyer in an overseas court in a case involving national security where the British Government was the plaintiff. It would have been, and it should be, inconceivable. There is an amazing mixture of inexperience and irresponsibility in the Leader of the Opposition's conduct in this matter.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: rose——

Mr. Hurd: No, I shall not give way. I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman.
No doubt there will be opportunities—I certainly hope so—when the case is over to look back at this and other aspects of it. The case provides the latest of a long line of regrettable examples of the breakdown of the consensus which would be necessary if any of the models which I described earlier were to be acceptable in this country.
The record shows that, compared with their predecessors, including the Government in which the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) served—although he may have had ideas of his own at that time—this Government have been open and receptive to fresh ideas in security. The discussion will continue, as it is bound to do. I am glad to have the opportunity to set out for the first time my view on how those arrangements work. We shall listen carefully to the debate and to suggestions which may be made when the Australian case is over. The public has a clear view of these matters. The public understands and—the right hon. Member for Devonport acknowledged this—they are not taken in by all this scavenging. They understand the need for a Security Service. They are becoming somewhat impatient with those who wish to undermine that service by removing the confidentiality which must lie at its core.
This is an area in which fair-sounding compromises must be carefully examined because they can be especially dangerous. The Prime Minister and I, as the points of contact between the Security Service and the House, will maintain to the full our responsibilities. In a dangerous world we shall continue to do all that we can to preserve the integrity and necessary confidentiality of that service.

Mr. Gerald Kaufman: The Home Secretary has just enunciated to the House an extraordinary doctrine, whereby a national consensus on security matters is available from the Government provided that the House accepts that consensus as being that laid down by the Government's defence policy. As the latest opinion polls show that 13 per cent. of the electorate

support the Government's defence policy, that seems extraordinary arrogance, even by the Government's standards.
This debate arises from the Government's action in the New South Wales High Court to prevent the publication of Mr. Peter Wright's book "Spycatcher." The Home Secretary said that he would dearly like to make a comment on the Australian case, but that he cannot. Instead, those comments are being made by Mr. Bernard Ingham and Mr. James Coe outside the House. They are paid by the taxpayer but they are not responsible to the House.
The mystery at the heart of the affair is why the Government decided to bring their action in Sydney. The confused and conflicting explanations have led to the miserable predicament of the Secretary to the Cabinet wriggling in the witness box as the Government chief witness and to the controversy in which the matter is now engulfed. One explanation is that the book contains material so secret that our national security would be endangered if it were to be published and become widely available. If national security was to be endangered by the book's propagation, no one could argue with the Government's action in seeking to prevent its circulation.
Reports show that the book deals principally with two matters. The first is the allegation that elements in MI5 were engaged in a conspiracy against the 1974–1976 Government of Lord Wilson. Those suspicions have been aired before. Secondly, in case by any chance they are true, it is surely right that they should be confirmed or disposed of. I would have thought that anyone, regardless of party, would have wished someone seeking to undermine a legitimately elected Government to be exposed and brought to book.
After all, such people would be involved in subversion, and the function of MI5 is to combat subversion, not to indulge in it. Any such possibility sustains demands for some form of parliamentary accountability for the security services. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), when he was leader of the Labour party, advocated such accountability at the time of the Prime affair, as did my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition at the time of the Bettaney affair. In 1983, the Labour party manifesto advocated a statutory basis for the security services founded upon a security Act and involving a Select Committee.
It is said that Mr. Peter Wright goes into detail about the possibility that Sir Roger Hollis, the former head of MI5, was a Soviet agent. Those two issues have been frequently aired, first in Mr. Chapman Pincher's book "Their Trade is Treachery" and since then almost ad nauseam. The latest example is Mr. Phillip Knightley's book "The Second Oldest Profession". That was published only last month and, as far as I can tell, without objection or interference from the Government.
In any case, if security requires sensitive matters to be kept secret from a potential adversary, it is difficult to understand how the suspicions about Hollis fall into that category. It is certain that the only people who know for certain whether Hollis was a Russian agent are the Russians. It appears that the Government wish to conceal from the British people what is already known to the KGB. Perhaps that is what the Prime Minister defines as national security, but an alternative explanation has been


offered in connection with the book "One Girl's War", which the Government were unsuccessful in trying to suppress yesterday in the court in Dublin.
A statement from the Attorney-General's chambers said that the Government's action was
based on the general principle that any publication of memoirs by a former member of the secret service, drawing on information acquired in that capacity, impaired the effective functioning of the service, unless it had been authorised. The claim is not based on any allegation that publication of material contained in the book will cause further and specific damage to national security.
On Monday this week, the Attorney-General said at Question Time:
The principle concerning the book of the late Mrs. Miller is exactly the same principle in which we have started the proceedings in the Australian courts… The idea that we can allow officers or ex-officers of the security services to write books would probably end with us not having any important secrets which should be preserved."—[Official Report, 1 December 1986; Vol. 106, c. 620.]
Speaking in Sydney, Mr. Theo Simos QC, for the Crown, said that disclosure by an insider, irrespective of content, could be detrimental to the Crown. Questioned by Mr. Justice Powell, Mr. Simos said that this would be so even if it concerned a cookbook in Whitehall.
It would appear that the Government are concerned only with direct publication by someone who is serving or who has served in the security services. That point was made by the Home Secretary today. It is a curious approach. It shows that MI5 men and women are perfectly free to reveal secrets provided that they do not do so in their own names. That would open a lucrative market for members or ex-members of the security services to sell their secrets, perhaps at a high price, for others to publish. For them to do so would be a flagrant breach of the Official Secrets Act, but the attitudes of the Attorney-General and the Prime Minister to the Official Secrets Act are curiously selective.
If this approach is the one adopted by the Government, it would explain why Mr. Arthur Martin, who has been an MI5 and an MI6 officer, was not prosecuted for providing secret information for publication by Mr. Nigel West, alias Mr. Rupert Allason, who is the prospective Conservative candidate for Torbay. In the witness box in Sydney, Sir Robert Armstrong said this about Mr. Martin providing that information to Mr. West:
He has not observed his obligation.
That approach would also explain why Mr. Peter Wright was not prosecuted for selling secrets to Mr. Chapman Pincher. It might also explain why Mr. West, alias Allason, and Mr. Pincher have not been prosecuted. They are certainly liable for prosecution for breach of the Official Secrets Act by receiving information from ex-members of the security services.
Mr. Justice Powell said of Mr. West-Allason's book that he had read it and it
is replete with instances of agents, informers and defectors being named, and operations being disclosed.
When questioned in court, Sir Robert Armstrong said:
I can't say as a matter of fact whether the book contains such information but I believe it to be likely. If it does contain that information, then it was obtained by a breach of confidentiality by those concerned.
So it was a breach of confidentiality, and therefore a breach of the Official Secrets Act.
Mr. West has stated frankly that he was provided by sources within MI5 with what he calls "relevant extracts" of two reports written by a senior MI5 officer, Mr. Ronnie

Symonds. The report identified five possible Soviet spies in MI5. Mr. West says that those documents are in his solicitor's safe because his sources in MI5 forgot to ask for them back. Still there was no prosecution. No wonder that Sir Robert Armstrong said in Sydney:
The policy is consistent. Only its practice varies.
That goes in spades for the Government's approach to Mr. Chapman Pincher's book, "Their Trade is Treachery". Let me make it clear that I have no criticism of Mr. West-Allason or Mr. Pincher. They did no deals with anyone to get their books published. If those books were in breach of the law, it is not their fault that no action was taken against them. It is the fault of the Government. That is why it is completely bogus for the Government to claim that the issues here are of national security. The issues relate to corrupt decision-making in government. That is why the charges that we make are charges against the Government and especially against the Prime Minister.
What do we know about Mr. Pincher's book? Mr. Pincher said that he had given up any intentions of writing more about security until he was approached by Mr. Wright. That approach is said to have come through Lord Rothschild. Questions must be asked about Lord Rothschild's role as claimed by Mr. Wright. Is it true that Lord Rothschild initiated Mr. Wright's connection with the book? Did Lord Rothschild send Mr. Wright a first-class ticket for him to fly from Tasmania to Britain? Did Lord Rothschild suggest to Mr. Wright that he should collaborate with Mr. Pincher on a book about Sir Roger Hollis? Did Lord Rothschild bring Mr. Wright and Mr. Pincher together? Did Lord Rothschild arrange for Mr. Wright's substantial pay-off to be laundered through a Swiss bank account? Was Lord Rothschild acting on his own initiative or was he acting as agent for someone else? If so, for whom? Mr. Wright says that, before sending for him, Lord Rothschild had been discussing intelligence matters with the Prime Minister. Is that true? Until those questions are answered, the issue will not go away.

Mr. Dalyell: In view of the Home Secretary's answer to an earlier intervention, are we not justified in asking that, at least in the reply to the debate, there should be an explanation of the Prime Minister's meeting with Lord Rothschild in his flat? Prime Ministers do not normally go to the flats of citizens, however distinguished, without a purpose. May we know what that purpose was?

Mr. Kaufman: I have put several questions to the Home Secretary and the Leader of the House, and before I sit down I shall put a good many more. We must ask why no action was taken to stop publication of Mr. Chapman Pincher's book. There are different versions of how the book came into the possession of Government officials. One is that the manuscript or the proofs of the book were in the Government's hands by February 1981—about six weeks before its publication. Some suggest that MI6 got hold of a copy of the book even earlier than that. In any case, it is alleged that, by February 1981, the book had been obtained illicitly—stolen—on behalf of the Government. If that is so, did the Ministers and officials who considered it know it to have been stolen?
As Sir Robert Armstrong said in the witness box in Sydney, a meeting was held involving the Prime Minister, the former Home Secretary, Lord Whitelaw, the director-general of MI5, Sir Howard Smith, and possibly Sir Robert Armstrong. Sir Robert was not clear on that point. One claim is that MI5 argued that an injunction to stop


the book should not be sought since a court action would involve the admission that the book was obtained illicitly. Another version is that the Prime Minister was told that it was too late to stop the book. That is a curious argument, because the Government were perfectly ready to have Joan Miller's book withdrawn from circulation in Dublin, even after it was published and put on sale in London.
Sir Robert Armstrong says that the Prime Minister was not at all in favour of publishing Mr. Pincher's book. Mr. Pincher provides a different account. In a letter to Mr. Wright, which was read in open court in Sydney and accepted as accurate by Mr. Pincher in an article which he wrote in the Sunday Express, Mr. Pincher wrote as follows on 27 January 1983:
On New Year's Day I was shooting with Havers, the Attorney-General, who is very friendly and told me about West's book. It is an extraordinary story and I urge you to have nothing whatever to do with West or with anything associated with him. For reasons I do not understand Martin"—
that is Mr. Arthur Martin, a former MI5 and MI6 agent—
agreed to see West. Havers told me that they met six times and on each occasion Martin told West secret information. In addition he showed him secret documents which should not have been in his possession. West then wrote his book and in it not only quoted Martin by name but quoted from the documents saying that they were secret! West is so stupid and naive"—
that is the gentleman who is seeking entry to the House of Commons on the Conservative side, and there are other words about him in this letter which you would not permit me to quote, Mr. Deputy Speaker—
that he then sent Martin a copy of the script for his comments. Martin was terrified and immediately took the book to the office in an effort to get himself out of the mess. The office informed Havers who then issued an injunction to have the offending parts removed for had the book been published, the Government would have had no option but to prosecute both Martin and West…Havers told me that he is still considering whether to prosecute Martin but says he cannot do that without prosecuting West, who has been adopted as a Tory candidate. Mrs. T is furious with him (West).…
I can assure you that there is no intention whatever of taking action against me"—
that is, Mr. Chapman Pincher—
which means you too"—
that is, Mr. Peter Wright.
I lunched with Dickie Franks"—
that is, Sir Arthur Franks, the former head of MI6—
recently and he told me that they had my book weeks in advance and came to the conclusion that they would rather I did it than anyone else. They had heard that West, Duncan Campell Penrose etc. were on the trail and preferred my authorship".
Therefore, Mr. Pincher's book was welcomed by the authorities. Does that mean that its publication was authorised? That argument has been put forward by Mr. Justice Powell in Sydney and explains why no action was taken against it.
In a curious episode, Sir Robert Armstrong made the Government's attitude explicit. On 23 March 1981, when the Daily Mail began serialising Mr. Pincher's book, Sir Robert Armstrong telephoned Mr. William Armstrong, the managing director of the publishers Sidgwick and Jackson, asking for copies of the book, which Sidgwick and Jackson were to publish on the 26th of that month, in case the Prime Minister wished to make a statement about it.
Mr. William Armstrong refused to provide the book without a guarantee that the Government would not take action against it. Sir Robert Armstrong agreed to that and a letter was negotiated in a telephone conversation. Sir Robert went to the publishers, collected two copies of the book and left the letter there. Its key paragraph stated:
The request (for copies of the book) is not made with a view to seeking to prevent or delay publication and I can assure you that we shall not do so.
That commitment was confirmed on the telephone to me today by Mr. William Armstrong of Sidgwick and Jackson. He read to me the full letter agreed between himself and the Secretary to the Cabinet. Mr. Jackson told me of the full circumstances surrounding that extraordinary guarantee not to proceed against "Their Trade is Treachery".
The House requires clear answers to certain important questions. I would have put my first question directly to the Attorney-General, and it is deplorable that he has not come to the House today—but no doubt my questions will be conveyed to him. First, did the Attorney-General go shooting with Mr. Pincher on new year's day 1983 and tell him that it was impossible to prosecute Mr. Arthur Martin without also prosecuting Mr. Nigel West, and that Mr. West was a Conservative candidate? Is that why the Attorney-General prosecuted neither Mr. Martin nor Mr. West?
Was the Attorney-General consulted about the letter to Mr. William Armstrong, promising not to prevent publication of Mr. Pincher's book? If so, did he assent to the guarantee? If so, why? If not, was the Attorney-General overridden? If so, did he know that he was being overridden, or was he just ignored as he had been six weeks before when the group of Ministers, under the Prime Minister, decided to take no action against Mr. Pincher?
The Attorney-General must also answer questions about his attitude to other unauthorised revelations by ex-MI5 officers. The Attorney-General has prosecuted people under the Official Secrets Act before now. He prosecuted Miss Sarah Tisdall and Mr. Clive Ponting, although neither of those civil servants had been a member of the security services. Therefore, the Attorney-General knows how to use the Act.
However, he did not prosecute Miss Cathy Massiter, although she looked tailormade for prosecution. She was a relatively recent ex-MI5 officer who had served in M15 for about 14 years. Last year, she provided a good deal of information, on camera, in a programme on Channel 4. It was very sensitive information, and included details of warrants signed by the then Home Secretary for telephone taps. She also provided information about other covert activities. Mr. Justice Taylor confirmed the accuracy of that information in the High Court only three months ago.

Mr. Tony Marlow: The right hon. Gentleman was discussing the subject of telephones. I wonder whether he could tell the House whether there have been any further calls between the office of the Leader of the Opposition and Mr. Turnbull in Australia since the 26th of last month? Is that liaison still continuing?

Mr. Kaufman: The hon. Gentleman's last intervention on this matter to come to my attention was when he referred to Miss Patricia Hewitt as a lickspittle. When I heard him use that epithet, I decided that it takes one to know one. As usual, the hon. Gentleman's interventions are beneath contempt.
We are discussing the failure to prosecute an ex-MI5 agent who has clearly given information away, outwith the Official Secrets Act. When Miss Massiter did that, the Independent Broadcasting Authority was so scared that it might be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act that, at first, it banned the programme. However, on 18 March last year, the Attorney-General told the House that he would not prosecute. Why? After all, Miss Massiter met in full the criteria that the Attorney-General stated in this House two days ago in relation to the need to prevent officers and ex-officers of the security services from revealing secrets. Why is Mr. Wright not allowed to publish secrets, when Miss Massiter was allowed to do so?
The question goes farther than that. In 1984, Granada Television screened a "World in Action" programme called "The Spy Who Never Was", in which a former MI5 officer spilled the beans. Secrets simply tumbled from his lips in a programme specifically built around his revelations. He talked about Mr. Symonds' investigation into Russian infiltration of our security services, the fluency exercise, the existence of the mole code-named Elli, the GRU agent code-named Sonia, a man named Watson who was alleged to have passed naval secrets to the Russians, and much more.
No action whatever was taken against that programme, or against that ex-MI5 officer, although the Government had had advance knowledge of the disclosures in the programme. Why was that programme, which was damaging to national security according to the Government's own definition of it, permitted to go out without any interference, especially when that ex-MI5 officer was none other than Mr. Peter Wright? Why is Mr. Wright not allowed to publish secrets to thousands of Australian book buyers, when he was allowed to publish secrets to millions of British television viewers? There must be some reason for that manipulation of the law, and the Attorney-General is bound to give it.
The Prime Minister has questions to answer, too. In her maiden speech, she said that the public had the right, in the first instance, to know what its elected representatives were doing. Under this Government, the only way in which we find out what our elected representatives are doing is through paid civil servants who are briefed by the Prime Minister to smear the Leader of the Opposition while he is away from the Floor of the House.

Mr. Nicholas Soames: rose——

Mr. Kaufman: During the past days, the Prime Minister has made much of the traditional bipartisanship on security matters. Her campaign has been aided by hon. Members who have either obtained their knighthoods, or who are hoping to do so in the reasonably near future. If the Prime Minister is so committed to bipartisanship on security matters, why did she not take the initiative and brief my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition on the background to the action against Mr. Wright, before that action was brought? Is the Prime Minister's definition of bipartisanship one-sided, to be observed by the Opposition, but not by the Government?
Why did the Prime Minister not make available to my right hon. Friend details of the proceedings in court in Sydney, so that he and the House in general could be properly informed? [Interruption.] Previous security briefings, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan), a former Prime

Minister—I only wish that he were Prime Minister now—will know, have always been made on the initiative of the Prime Minister of the day. Why did the Prime Minister not provide such a briefing for my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock)? I hope that Conservative Members, whether or not their party is in government, will accept that my right hon. Friend and other hon. Members in all parties have the right to full information about an action which the taxpayers whom we represent are financing to the tune of £1 million or more.
In those circumstances, if the Government were not proffering the information, how else was my right hon. Friend to obtain the information? Was he to rely on a leak from MI5? After all, we know that the Prime Minister authorises those leaks on a selective basis only, so he could not be sure of having access to one. Or did the Prime Minister not brief my right hon. Friend on these matters because there were matters which, even under a bipartisan policy, she did not want him to know? The House has the right to know.
The House expects the Prime Minister to tell us why she sent poor Sir Robert Armstrong to make a fool of himself in the witness box in Sydney and to leave in public tatters the previously prestigious and important office of Secretary to the Cabinet.

Mr. Michael Brown: rose——

Mr. Kaufman: No.
Will the Prime Minister say why, after Sir Robert Armstrong failed to tell the truth about the Attorney-General's role in relation to "Their Trade is Treachery", she allowed that untruth to remain on the record for 11 days, although she knew that it was an untruth? She knew it was an untruth because she was present at the meeting that decided not to proceed against Mr. Pincher's book and the Attorney-General was not. Therefore, she knew that Sir Robert had not told the truth when he said that the Attorney-General was involved in that decision. Why did the Prime Minister not take the tiniest step to put that untruth right? Would she ever have put it right, if the Attorney-General had not gone to her and told her that he had had enough? Would she have allowed that untruth to remain on the record?
Why did the Prime Minister exclude the Attorney-General from the meeting that made the decision not to proceed against Mr. Pincher? On Monday, the Attorney-General told the House:
When I am wearing my hat as Attorney-General and prosecutor, nobody can influence me and I would not accept any attempt to influence me from anybody."—[Official Report, 1 December 1986; Vol. 106, c. 619.]
Is that why the Prime Minister excluded him? Was she afraid that he would not give her the advice she wanted? Did she remember the Westland affair in which the Attorney-General warned that he would bring the police into No. 10 unless there was an inquiry? Was she afraid of her own Attorney-General?
That brings us to the key question. Why did that meeting, at which the Prime Minister was present and at which, as Prime Minister, she presumably presided, decide not to proceed against Mr. Pincher's book? Was the Prime Minister a party to Sir Robert Armstrong's guarantee to Sidgwick and Jackson not to prevent the book's publication? If neither the Prime Minister nor the Attorney-General were a party to that guarantee, what


authority did Sir Robert Armstrong have to make that guarantee? If he had the Prime Minister's authority, why did she give him that authority? We have the right to know the answers to all those questions.
The security services also want to know the answers to those questions. Far from safeguarding them, the Prime Minister has exposed the country's security services to international ridicule by the court action in Sydney. When she took action against trade unionists at GCHQ, she focused more attention on the activities at GCHQ than ever before in its history. Now this court action, purporting to safeguard state secrets and the integrity of our security services, has exposed to the gaze of the world more state secrets of the British security services than ever before in its history.
The nation has the right to ask why the Prime Minister has done that, and the nation is waiting for the answers.

Mr. Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. When the late Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller and the late Sir John Hobson were Law Officers in difficult circumstances, they sat on the Government Front Bench. Could——

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): Order. This is a short debate and many right hon. and hon. Members are waiting to catch my eye——

Mr. Dalyell: We ask for better things——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that the presence of individual hon. Members in the House is not a matter for me.

Mr. Julian Amery: These are deep waters and the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) has prudently chosen only to paddle in them. The right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) raised a serious issue—whether there should be a parliamentary Committee to supervise the secret services, but the right hon. Member for Gorton did not address himself for one minute to that. He raised only two questions about possible mistakes made by the secret services. First, was Sir Roger Hollis a Soviet agent and, secondly, was the Prime Minister of the day bugged by the secret services? He did not tell us whether he thought a Committee would assist in finding that out. He merely paraded his rather journalistic opinions about a trial that is going on in Australia and provided a second-rate supplementary brief to that of Mr. Turnbull, who is a cleverer lawyer than the right hon. Gentleman.
I have never served in either the counter-espionage or the secret services. For 45 years I have had close associations with both of them—during the war, later when I was in office, and otherwise. I have been tremendously impressed by their development over the years. At first they comprised venturesome amateurs who were recruited during the war from universities, businesses and elsewhere. They have grown into highly professional organisations. Indeed, they have had to, because they have had to face both the most professional secret services that the world has ever seen and the threat of terrorism.
Public opinion tends to focus on the arms race. People tend to forget the escalation in the competition of espionage and counter-espionage forced on the West by

the fantastic effort which the Soviet Union and its satellites have put into this type of war. The weapons have piled up—thank God they have not been used—but underground warfare has been continuous for the past 45 years.
It is difficult to assess whether the secret services are working successfully. So long as they do their job, nothing becomes news. Their work should remain secret. When a Colonel Penkovsky is caught and shot in Moscow it may seem to be a triumph for the secret services, but it is a disaster, because it is a line of information that has been cut. Mr. Gordievsky had to take refuge with us, and that is another line of information cut. When my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary—or, in bygone days Lord Home—repatriates Soviet diplomats or near-diplomats, that, too, is a disaster, because we are probably watching them to note their contacts, and so on. The successes that we know about are rare, and we must hope that there are not too many that become obvious.
If the head of the Security Service goes to see the Prime Minister and, rubbing his hands, says, "Oh, is it not marvellous, we have caught a spy, one of our men, in one of our high Government offices," the Prime Minister's heart must sink.
He or she must say, "Do you know what you have done? There will be a charge, a trial and an appeal, and it will be all over the press. It is a disaster." I think that it was Harold Macmillan who used the analogy that when his gamekeeper shot a fox he buried it and did not hang it up for the hunt to see. Unfortunately, our democratic institutions do not allow us to bury the people whom we catch in the same way. I sometimes wish that they did.
The right hon. Member for Devonport proposed a Committee of both Houses. The question is who is to serve on it, and who is to appoint its members? There are some difficulties in that regard. The right hon. Gentleman suggested that it should be made up of Privy Councillors. I am a great admirer of Privy Councillors; they are a very fine body of men. If the right hon. Member for Devonport and I were the only members of that Committee it might do very well, but I amused myself in my bath this morning thinking of Privy Councillors who might be selected from this House and the other place. Some of them are rather old, and some have dubious pasts. The shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) would qualify because of his experience as Secretary of State for Defence and because, as a young man, he was watched by the security services. We could find other Privy Councillors with interesting backgrounds. Some would obviously be no good at all. Consequently, I wonder whether such a Committee would be a good idea.
When I was younger, I often hoped to see the revival of the Committee of Imperial Defence. That was a great organisation. The leaders of the political parties met to receive information on defence policy. They were briefed on it, and it gave them an opportunity to exchange opinions. What would this proposed Committee do? Would it send for people and so identify the principal figures in our counter-intelligence and intelligence services? Would it send for papers? I hope to goodness that there are not too many papers about, as it might be very dangerous if they were distributed.
What would be the object of the exercise? How to cope with defectors? I do not think that the Committee would be likely to pinpoint weaknesses in the service. Would it consider how to advise on co-operation with the CIA or


the French and German intelligence services, or how to advise on the telephone tapping and surveillance of potential enemies? I cannot see a Committee of Privy Councillors—let alone a Committee diluted by others who are not Privy Councillors—doing that. Could the Committee avoid blunders? Could it settle the problem of whether Hollis was a Russian agent? Could it have avoided, if there was such a thing, the bugging of the Prime Minister's room? I have been able to identify only one major blunder, and that involved Commander Crabbe. Mr. Gough Whitlam has told us that Anthony Eden wanted to have Nasser and Grivas assassinated. Good thing too if he had done it; but I cannot see a Committee of Privy Councillors endorsing such an operation.
The most that it could do would be to carry out a postmortem on what had happened, but that is dangerous, and that is why we have the 30-year rule. I remember—if I may be anecdotal in my old age—that when I was in Albania during the war, an Albanian chief told me that he had a friend in a particular area who could help us. He said that he would send a message to him. I asked who he was and where his house was. He said, "I won't tell you as I might need him again, and he helped me 30 years ago."
I have some doubt about whether any committee, however distinguished, could be leakproof. Along with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, I have had the advantage of serving on the Committee of Privileges. In the short time that we worked together I was astonished to discover how many leaks there had been from different Committees.
The right hon. Member for Devonport may say that the Americans have a committee that invigilates the CIA. However, I wonder whether it works well. It is certainly time-consuming. When the committee is sitting, 40 members of the CIA sit on Capitol Hill all day, the next day, and the day after, tendering advice. We could hardly afford that, given the shoestring on which our secret services operate. As far as I know, the CIA regard that committee as being castrating.
Let us look at what has been happening. This morning's edition of the Herald Tribune tells us that Mr. Casey, the head of the CIA, admitted in cross-examination that the CIA gave some marginal help in the operation with Iran that led to funds being paid to the Contras in Nicaragua. If the CIA had not been subject to congressional control, I wonder whether Mr. McFarlane and Colonel North would have gone off on their own. If the secret services are muzzled too much, Governments may well be pushed into less reputable means of proceeding.
In every aspect of political life there is, of course, a strong case to be made for democratic control, but there is also a strong case to be made against it. There is certainly a strong case to be made for democratic control in internal affairs. The tendency is to delay, to call for public inquiries, and so on. It does not matter much. Even if the Government make a mistake they can amend it later. However, if mistakes are made abroad one does not always get the chance to rectify them. If I have any criticism of our secret services, it is that they are too cautious and restrained. That may be a fault on the right side, but we do not want to make them even more cautious then they already are.
We would do well to stick to our present methods of control. The Home Secretary supervises the Security Service, and the Foreign Secretary supervises the intelligence service. They have their links to the Cabinet

Office and No. 10 Downing street. Political control should be strengthened only informally, so that it does not become the subject of yet more questioning in the House. It is for the Secretaries of State of those Departments to delegate a little more to their Ministers of State and to ask them to concentrate more on those services. Lord Home did that to me when I was at the Foreign Office, but it was an entirely informal arrangement. It would be a great mistake to make such an arrangement formal. That would only weaken services which, by their very nature, have to be secret if they are to fulfil their duties and functions.

Mr. Roy Jenkins: In my experience, most security eruptions have been short-term affairs, convulsing the House and dominating the headlines for a short time, and then going away as quickly as they came, but I have a strong and growing feeling that this one is rather different. About 15 days ago, when I used the phrase "this foolish mission" about the excursion on which the Prime Minister had sent Sir Robert Armstrong, I had hardly begun to comprehend the enormity of the foolishness involved, or the vast capacity for damage, both private and public, which a combination of exceptional ill-judgment and exceptional stubbornness at the head of the Government—a unique and deadly mix—was capable of inflicting.
Recent events are, for once, unlikely to be a summer storm, quickly coming and going, first, because of the light that has been shone, cumulatively with the Westland affair, on the Prime Minister's methods of Government, and, secondly, because of the destructive blows, partly self-inflicted, partly inflicted by the misjudgments of the Government, to which the Security Service has been subjected, and which means that it will no longer be able to operate in the old shape. It is to these two aspects of the matter—the Prime Minister's habits of government, as revealed, and the blows to the Security Service—that I shall devote my speech.

Mr. David Harris: rose——

Mr. Jenkins: I have hardly started my speech. I must make my first point.
The Prime Minister's habits as head of Government are my first subject. I shall refer to her a good deal, but I shall also refer to the Attorney-General. I am bound to reiterate a view previously expressed, in good temper, that it is extraordinary that neither of them has come to the Chamber. The Government treat this House with a discourtesy that I have never seen paralleled in 39 years in the House. They are responsible, and should be here. I hope that the Leader of the House will take note of this, because it is an unnecessary pattern of behaviour that does not reflect credit on the Government or help the proceedings of the House.
The Prime Minister has shown herself wholly incapable of applying consistent standards by which she judges herself as she judges other people. This inconsistency is the core of the weakness of the Government's case in Australia, and that has already been touched on by my right hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) and by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). A particular example has been the Prime Minister's inability in the past two weeks or so to stick to a clear line about what she will or will not


discuss about security matters. She was far more explicit about the Blunt case in 1979 than any Prime Minister had been before about security matters. On the whole, she was right to be so in the circumstances. However, by doing so, she inevitably created a new climate, but within that climate she showed inconsistency.
In the past two weeks, since the Prime Minister was driven off the sub judice point, which she took in an extraordinarily ill-briefed way to begin with, she has fallen back to saying that she cannot discuss anything to do with the issue. That is her right, as it is the right of any Minister, not only on security matters, but in answer to any question, to judge what to say and to say no more. However, the Prime Minister has not been able to stick to that. Whenever a good point has come into her mind she has chased off after it, like somebody chasing a butterfly, but immediately, in the next breath, she has said that she cannot discuss security matters or anything to do with the case. That has not prevented her from denouncing Mr. Wright, who is very much a point at issue, and the Leader of the Opposition. I happen to believe that, in differing ways, they both rather deserve it, but that is not the point about her inconsistent treatment of the matter.
This habit of the Prime Minister is venial compared with a number of others that have emerged. First among these is her extraordinary capacity to expose to danger, and perhaps even to mutilation beyond hope of recovery, those who are closely associated with her. To some extent this applies to Ministers, as we can see from the case of the right hon. and learned Member for Richmond, Yorkshire (Mr. Brittan), but I am concerned, not with Ministers, but with civil servants. Sir Robert Armstrong, as the Prime Minister must now know well, should never have been sent to Australia, but it is not only he. Private secretaries and press officers are treated like junior officers, constantly called upon to go over the top in desperate partisan assaults not made more attractive by the fact that the primary orders are to safeguard the political life of their colonel-in-chief, the Prime Minister. My advice to the substantial number of notable civil servants who worked with or for me is, "Do not get too close to this Prime Minister. She is a upas tree—the branches may look splendid, but contact can be deadly."
The conduct of the Attorney-General does not always suggest wisdom or foresight. Leaving aside for the moment the conduct of the case in Australia, his belief that it was sensible to go to the Dublin courts about a book relating to the last war seems to show a sad deficiency of both geographical and historical knowledge. He is the senior Law Officer of the Crown, carrying all the traditions, responsibilities and powers of that office, which, with our unique mixing up of Executive, legislative and judicial arrangements, is an office of peculiar delicacy. As has been shown both here and in the Westland case, the Prime Minister does not begin to comprehend these nuances. She sees the Law Officers as junior Ministers who are in danger of getting too big for their boots, and who should be available to be wheeled out when they are useful to her, and to shut up when they are not.
This conflict of view has produced two remarkable performances from the Attorney-General during this year alone. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is not generally thought of as a Savonarola come among us. His reputation for agreeable indiscretion is perhaps greater

than that for the fearsome austerity of his pronouncements. However, twice, once when he threatened to call the police into No. 10 Downing street, and last week when he telephoned or sent some message to Australia, he has felt constrained to blow a whistle. When he has done so, on both occasions everybody has stood transfixed, as though the last trump has been sounded in some allegorical painting by Blake and, for the moment, stopped doing the apparently dreadful things that they had been doing a moment before. It casts an interesting and extraordinary light on the home life of our own dear Government that a rather unshockable Attorney-General should twice be so deeply and effectively shocked. It also makes me wonder what happens about which he does not yet know.
Lessons are to be learnt from the recent events and their effect on the future of the Security Service. The first is that it becomes increasingly clear that security can rarely be maintained through the courts. It can sometimes be done by mutual trust, and it is desirable that it is done in that way, perhaps fortified by better pensions. Occasionally it can be done in British courts, particularly if one finds a reasonably Executive-minded judge. The Government are certainly unlikely to find such a judge in Sydney or Dublin. That might be a reasonable precaution to think of and to take beforehand.
Secondly, the British Government try to keep far too many secrets. They are the most secretive Government in the Western world, but as a result they are certainly not the most efficient. By trying to keep back too many secrets they devalue the few which, in my view, they try legitimately to safeguard. This secrecy obsession demonstrates itslf under this Government in the peculiarly unacceptable hypocrisy of a Prime Minister whose stock-in-trade is leaks from the top accompanied by prosecutions lower down.
Thirdly, the security services, and MI5 especially, have suffered grave damage to their reputation and credibility. As I said in the House just over two weeks ago, I believe that there is a strong probability of Sir Roger Hollis's innocence. It is hardly ever possible, however, to prove a negative, and certainly not at this distance of time, and there are a number of MI5 ex-officers who believe the reverse. That hardly points to a coherent or convincing organisation.
We have Mr. Wright's allegation that a surveillance operation was mounted against Lord Wilson of Rievaulx when he was Prime Minister in the mid-1970s. As I understand it, Mr. Wright says that he was attracted by such an operation, but resiled from it. That hardly enhances his reputation. During most of the period at issue I was Home Secretary, and I need hardly say that I knew nothing of any such operation involving Lord Wilson. Therefore, if it took place it was wholly illegal. I would add that if it did take place, it could have been conceived and mounted only by people with dangerously unbalanced minds.
Many criticisms can be made of Lord Wilson's stewardship—I have made some in the past and I have no doubt that I may make some more in future—but the view that he, with his too persistent record of maintaining Britain's imperial commitments across the world, with his over-loyal lieutenancy to Lyndon Johnson, with his fervent royalism, and with his light ideological luggage, was a likely candidate to be a Russian or Communist agent is one that can be entertained only by someone with a mind diseased by partisanship or unhinged


by living for too long in an Alice-Through-the-Looking-glass world in which falsehood becomes truth, fact becomes fiction and fantasy becomes reality.
The result of the allegation has been substantially to fortify the view that I expressed in a letter to The Times 18 months ago, which is that MI5 should now be pulled totally out of its political surveillance role.

Mr. Hurd: In his analysis of the allegation that he has mentioned, the right hon. Gentleman has not referred to the statement which was made by the Prime Minister of the day, which appears in Hansard of 8 December 1977. The then Prime Minister reported the detailed inquiries which he had made into the allegation and his conclusion that he was satisfied that at no time had the Security Service, or any other agency, undertaken the sort of surveillance that had been suggested.

Mr. Jenkins: The Prime Minister of the day is here and he can speak for himself. I am sure that I would accept entirely what he said in December 1977. I would think it incredible that this was in any way an official operation, but there are possibilities of an unofficial operation, and I think that they should now be examined. The fact that people who held senior positions in MI5 talked about these matters cannot be dismissed as being of negligible importance.
I took the view before these recent events emerged that it was advisable that MI5 should be pulled out of its political surveillance role. I had been doubtful of the value of that role for some time. I am convinced now that an organisation of people who lived in the fevered world of espionage and counter-espionage, is entirely unfitted to judge between what is subversion and what is legitimate dissent.
Nor is the associated political intelligence role worth while, in my view. The object of this is presumably to help Ministers with useful information. In my experience, however, the organisation wastes a great deal of Ministers' time in dealing with its own peccadillos, which detracts from any benefit which it provides. The balance sheet is distinctly negative.
There remain other activities——

Mr. Amery: Will the right hon. Gentleman take into account the bringing to book of Mr. Hindawi recently in the El Al case, which was partly attributable to the good surveillance of the counter-espionage system?

Mr. Jenkins: That is not to do with political surveillance in this country. That is not to do with internal political surveillance. I was about to say, had the right hon. Gentleman not interrupted me—I make no complaint that he did so—that that leaves the other two main aspects of MI5's work, which are anti-terrorist activities and spy catching. Its anti-terrorism activities are clearly crucial and vital, but how much room is there for an organisation which is entirely separate from the special branch, and not always wholly co-operative with it? I do not express judgment on that, but I think that it might be useful to have some independent advice from some body of the sort that my right hon. and hon. Friends and I are suggesting.
I am sure that there is some need for a continuing specialised agency to deal with counter-espionage. Perhaps we can exaggerate the role of such an agency by saying that it should be given the highest national priority, but there

should certainly be one in place that is efficient and trusted. That activity must now be subject to more political supervision. That is necessary because politicians want to get their hands on things, which is something of which I am not necessarily all that much in favour, and because of the desperate need to recover confidence in the Security Service. Anyone who indulges in bluster and says that there is no problem is really talking nonsense.
In my view, the present political command is not wholly satisfactory, for two reasons. First, there is a degree of split responsibility between the Home Secretary, who is responsible for MI5, and the Foreign Secretary, who is responsible for MI6. The two organisations are different, but there can be a crack where they join, where it is quite difficult for either the Home Secretary or the Foreign Secretary to see the whole picture.
Secondly, and of more importance, there is some complication of responsibility between the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister, which is symbolised by the role of the Cabinet Secretary as the chief official, though he is in no way the servant of the Home Secretary. Some people think he ought not to be the servant of the Prime Minister either, but that raises a wider issue which I do not propose to examine at this stage. Apart from those gaps—those lacunae—there is a need to move a little outside the Executive. The motion suggests a good form of supervision. It is not the only form, but it is a sensible one.
My attention was drawn today to a matter of which I was not previously aware. I do not know whether the Home Secretary is aware of it. In 1955 the Prime Minister of the day set up a public service security conference of Privy Councillors, with three members of the Government, three members of the Opposition and the permanent secretary to the Treasury. The exact terms of reference were to examine the security procedures that applied in the public service and to consider whether any further precautions were called for and should be taken. That was after the Burgess and Maclean affair.
Certainly, therefore, a group of this sort is not without precedent. I do not suggest that this is the only solution. It is a good one, and it should hold the ground in the absence of any other. It will come. The essential question is whether this Government or another Government accept it freely and constructively, or whether it is dragged out reluctantly.
I return to the Prime Minister's style of government. The Prime Minister, with the possible exception of Anthony Eden for a few unfortunate weeks exactly 30 years ago, is undoubtedly the most self-righteous Prime Minister since Neville Chamberlain in the wholly relevant sense of despising her opponents, whoever they may be, and being convinced of her own moral superiority. In these circumstances, it is peculiarly unfortunate that, whenever attention is focused on some activity in which she has been involved, as in Westland, as here, there should be a trail of dissimulation left behind.

Mr. Marlow: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You may not have had the opportunity to see this, but there is a serious allegation in today's evening paper that the Leader of the Opposition has had a mole, a Mr. Greengrass, in the case in Australia——

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): Order.

Mr. Marlow: I am asking, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if there is any way in which we can——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must find some other time to raise this matter. We must proceed with the amendment.

Mr. Marlow: Further to the point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is there any way that the Opposition can ask for a suspension of this debate until such time as the Leader of the Opposition is here to answer those allegations?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Of course there is a way. The hon. Gentleman can proceed on such a matter only by putting down a substantive motion.

Sir Edward Gardner: I wish to refer to something mentioned by the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) when he opened the debate. He spoke about the way in which Mr. Peter Wright had betrayed the secrets that he was sworn to keep.
A member of the Security Service, who is sworn to keep secrets, as Mr. Wright was, does more than bring himself into disrepute. He undermines the working of the service, which is one of the most sensitive, most important and, so it seems, one of the most vulnerable of our defences against such dangers as espionage and subversion. It exposes us to these dangers. I can see no difference between a member of the Security Service who breaks his oath and sells his secret to a publisher, and a member of the Security Service who sells his secrets to the Russians. The effect and the damage are the same in both cases. To say that it is wholly reprehensible is to put it as modestly as one can.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Sir Edward Gardner: May I continue?

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Just briefly?

Sir Edward Gardner: Yes.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Does the hon. Gentleman believe that those who purchase—that is to say, authors and journalists—should be prosecuted?

Sir Edward Gardner: I have not considered that question. My opinion on it would have no influence, and I shall certainly not give one to the House now.
The difficulties that are being faced by the Government have been faced in the past by successive Governments, and, no doubt, will be faced by Governments in future unless something is done to prevent them. There are two prime causes of these difficulties. One difficulty is section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 and the other is the fact that there is no oversight of the workings of the Security Service. As we all know, section 2 is perhaps the best example of an appalling piece of legislation. The Franks committee described it as a mess, and a mess it is. It said that people cannot be sure what it means, how it operates or what action under it is likely to bring a prosecution. The Franks committee also said that this piece of legislation ought to be repealed as soon as possible by the Government. With some comfort, I heard my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary say that, when the Australian case is completed, the Government will listen to suggestions. I hope that he will consider the repeal of this legislation.
The Security Commission, which looked at the Bettaney case, concluded that the Security Service was

highly efficient, but the committee had heard evidence and was critical of the internal working of the Security Service. It has been said that it is doubtful that Michael Bettaney would have tried to turn to the KGB had he had the opportunity to consult somebody such as a complaints commissioner in the Security Service. It is unlikely—this must be a charitable view, if nothing else—that Miss Massiter would have used the media if she had been able to make her complaints to someone inside the Security Service. What is more, if there had been a complaints commissioner, the suspicions that had been aroused about Sir Roger Hollis—however cogent or mistaken they may have been—could have been investigated earlier and more convincingly if there had been a complaints commissioner.

Mr. Beith: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, however much we might deplore the more recent actions of Mr. Peter Wright, at an earlier stage he sought to get attention to a memorandum from the Prime Minister and others in the Government, in an apparently desperate attempt to have some attention given to a problem which, clearly at that stage, was his main motivation, namely his suspicions about Sir Roger Hollis?

Sir Edward Gardner: I do not accept for a moment that that was his main motivation.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: It was originally.

Sir Edward Gardner: It may have been earlier, but I do not accept now that that is his main motivation. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith). A person who has a genuine and serious complaint would have a better chance of resolving his difficulties and alleviating his anxieties if there was someone—say, a complaints commissioner—to help him.
I return to the heart of the debate. Should we have, as has been suggested, a joint committee, comprising Privy Councillors, with the power, ability and reliability to look at the Security Service? In 1985, in Committee on the Interception of Communications Bill, I submitted that there should be a complaints commissioner who would be a person who had held high office and on whom everyone could rely. I was grateful, and was given greater confidence in submitting that point, because I had the support of the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), a former Home Secretary, and the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan), a former Home Secretary and former Prime Minister.
The idea of using a committee of Privy Councillors or a Committee of both Houses to oversee—if that is the objective—the activities and internal workings of the Security Service does not commend itself to me. The fewer people, no matter how distinguished, who know secrets, the better. I suppose that the natural way of dealing with this matter would be for the Select Committee on Home Affairs to consider it. I hope that no one makes that suggestion, because it certainly would not bring forward an enthusiastic response from me. I submit that there is a possibility of using a committee of Privy Councillors.
There is oversight of the security services in the United States and Canada and I believe that it is beneficial. I suggest—the idea is not mine, but I wish that it were—that the committee of Privy Councillors could be sent to the United States, Canada and perhaps West Germany to


see how the oversight systems work there. I hope that that idea commends itself to the Government, at the end of the Australian proceedings, as one that could be of assistance in deciding whether the principle of oversight by an ombudsman or complaints commissioner—I do not mind what he is called—is a good one or is flawed.

Mr. Winnick: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman remember—we are on the same Select Committee—that when we decided to look into the activities of the special branch, critics made it known inside and, no doubt, outside the House that we were in some way undermining the security of the state? Although we differed in our conclusions, as shown in the majority and minority reports, does the hon. and learned Gentleman agree that, following the first parliamentary scrutiny of the special branch, which worked closely with the intelligence service, no one has yet accused us of undermining the security of the state. Does that not prove that some kind of parliamentary accountability of the intelligence service would do no harm and would safeguard our democracy?

Sir Edward Gardner: The hon. Gentleman knows, because we have considered this matter many times, that I approach that view with great caution. The difficulty associated with disclosing any such information to Parliament is formidable, to say the least. The proposition that we should discuss in open debate in the Parliament what goes on in the security services is totally unacceptable.
I hope that, after the Australian case is completed, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will consider the suggestions which have been brought forward. I put it to him that he should consider how oversight works in Canada and the United States, ascertain whether we can benefit from such a system in this country and stop these endless difficulties and anxieties which must be disastrous for the morale of the security services.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: I should like to follow the remarks of the hon. and learned Member for Fylde (Sir E. Gardner) on his concept of a complaints commissioner. I believe that there is something that can be done in the short term without waiting for long-term solutions. In evidence to the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan) suggested that there was a powerful case for separating the posts of Cabinet Secretary and head of the Civil Service. It so happens that in oral question No. 6 tomorrow to the Prime Minister there is a substantial question on the Order Paper, which should be reached, asking her to do precisely that.
If the post of head of the Civil Service was separate from that of Cabinet Secretary, the head of the Civil Service would be a person to whom civil servants with their grievances—call them "deep throats" or whatever—could go. Had there been such a separation, the history of the Ponting episode might have been very different, because there would have been someone to whom Clive Ponting could legitimately have gone. He felt that he could not go to Sir Robert Armstrong. Sir Robert, in his evidence to the Select Committee on Defence, said that Clive Ponting should have gone to him, but, in the circumstances, that was a bit unrealistic.
If the rumours and signs are true that Sir Robert Armstrong is likely on his return from Australia, whenever

that is, to resign of his own volition—simply because that might be an opportunity to do so and because of circumstances—there would be an opportunity to split the offices of Cabinet Secretary and head of the Civil Service for precisely the reasons given by the hon. and learned Member for Fylde.
I am glad that my party will not vote on the motion. Had it done so, I should have felt unable to support it in the Lobby. A Select Committee to consider this matter could be an absurdity and unworkable. Who is to be on the Select Committee? I should like to be on it, but I might not be the first choice of my colleagues! There would be endless grousing and grumbling and we would be in danger of having first-class and second-class Members of Parliament. My hon. Friends the Members for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) and for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) and I might be deemed by others to be second-class Members of Parliament, but I do not think that any of us sees himself exactly in that light.
There are difficulties as to who is to be on the Select Committee and whether they should sign a declaration under the Official Secrets Act 1911. It might involve raking up their pasts. It is a serious issue.

The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): Of course it is.

Mr. Dalyell: The Leader of the House agrees that it is a serious issue. I am afraid that I am very conventional in these matters and believe that the proper way to control the security services is, for MI5, through the Home Office. For intelligence gathering—intelligence assessment is a different matter—MI6 should be controlled through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The real way to operate an effective control is to have powerful permanent secretaries of the calibre of Sir Charles Cunningham and Sir Philip Allen, now Lord Allen of Abbeydale, and to have number twos either in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office or in the Home Office who have a certain continuity in these matters. I do not have first-hand knowledge, but I suspect that there is no chance of controlling MI5 and MI6 unless there is a certain continuity. As ephemeral politicians how can we expect to have that control?
I should like to go back to the legitimate questions asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). My point relates to Lord Rothschild. There is no question of a witch hunt against Lord Rothschild. Let me make it perfectly clear that I do not think he is the fourth, fifth, or sixth man or anything of that kind. He has a reputation in Cambridge and elsewhere for great kindness to personal friends, a man for whom friendship is most important. But it has to be asked, because rich men do not normally behave lightly in these things, why on earth did Lord Rothschild think it necessary to send a first-class fare to bring Mr. Peter Wright to Britain?
A lot of people ask if Mr. Wright has in any way a hold on Lord Rothschild and that question must be asked. Further, one must ask, what precisely is the relationship in these matters between Lord Rothschild and the Prime Minister? Here we have over the public print that she went to him to ask for his advice or whatever. It does not bear directly on the Australian case, but it deserves to be cleared up. It happened rather before the Australian case, and the


questions that my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton thought right to put deserve to be answered either tonight, or this week by letter.
The next issue I should like to raise is the Government policy of state burglary. It is accepted that five weeks before "There Trade is Treachery" was published there was a break-in at the office of Sidgwick and Jackson, the publishers of the book.
It is also accepted that a draft proof was stolen or purloined and that two or three days before publication there was a request from 10 Downing street for a copy of the book.
It is accepted that the publishers and Mr. Pincher said, "If we give you a copy of the book how can we be certain that you will not slap an injunction on it?" They were told, "We will give you a written guarantee within two hours that there will be no injunction." The publishers and Mr. Chapman asked, "How on earth can you give a guarantee if you have not read it?" They were told, "We have read it."
How did they get hold of the copy? Of course they could not go and tell the Attorney-General because he would have the sense to ask where they got the copy and would be an accessory after burglary. We are talking about state burglary and my hon. Friends and I and a number of other people want to know the exact Government policy on state burglary. If it was carried out without ministerial authority it raises the most acute questions of control. Are we saying that MI5, MI6 or whoever can go, for whatever reasons and pinch draft copies of books, however awkward they may be, without ministerial authority? Was there ministerial authority?
My next question is about the Attorney-General. I tried to raise a point of order and I think it was a substantial one. I remember that as a new Member of Parliament I saw the Law Officers Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller and Sir John Hobson being on the Front Bench the whole time when they had to face the music. I had a high regard for Sir John Hobson. He was an honourable man and, as the Leader of the House will remember, he thought it his duty to be present in the House for awkward matters.

Mr. Biffen: I do not wish to prolong the hon. Gentleman's speech, but in fairness to my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General I must say that this motion is about the establishment of a commission and it is appropriate that the Home Secretary should respond to the debate and that I, as Leader of the House, should wind up. Of course my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General will take a keen interest in what has been said in the debate, but the hon. Gentleman is quite incorrect to say that the Attorney-General should assume that every hon. Member would speak as widely on the terms of the motion as he is doing.

Mr. Dalyell: If the Attorney-General takes such a keen interest, what better does he have to do than to be present for three hours in the House? This matter is a bit more than the amour propre of hon. Members. The Attorney-General is an honourable man and I believe that he would have wished to be here. Frankly, the conclusion that some of us draw is that he has been told to keep out of the light—[AN HON. MEMBER: "That is a silly point."]—It is not a silly point. It is a re-run of something else spoken about

by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton about what has happened over Westland. We must see these things in context.
I have repeatedly tried to ask the Prime Minister and others how the heck it comes about that the Attorney-General, our senior Law Officer, finds it necessary to go to the lengths of threatening Sir Robert Armstrong with action by the Director of Public Prosecutions or the police unless an inquiry into the Law Officer's letter was authorised.
It is not every day of the week that the constabulary threaten to go to 10 Downing street, and that at least deserves some explanation. My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) and other hon. Members smile at that, but the Law Officers threatened to go to 10 Downing street. This is not some fantasy of a fevered conspiratorial MP. Truth is stranger than fiction.
I listened to the speech by the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Jenkins). It may be within his recollection that I went to see him during the period of office of the first Wilson Government at a time when I was asking awkward questions about variable geometry aircraft on Aldabra atoll. I was being the proverbial bloody nuisance to my own Government. [HON. MEMBERS: "Never."] I asked why I thought that my lines of communication were being interfered with. He gave me a civil hearing but I should like to come back to his point. There is a difference between subversion and genuine political dissent.
As one of the regular dissenters in the House, I am in favour of a charter for proper dissenters. Dissension is very different from subversion. That is why some of us hope that if this Government do not, at least my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton and some of his colleagues will make jolly sure that the security services, which have a legitimate job to do, are brought under control in respect of political dissenters like me who are not a whit less patriotic than anyone else.

Mr. Speaker: Before I call the next speaker, may I remind the House that a large number of other hon. Gentlemen wish to take part in this debate, and I appeal for short contributions.

Mr. Ray Whitney: I shall certainly endeavour to follow your injunction, Mr. Speaker.
In many areas the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) is unconventional, but in this area he is conventional. I welcome that and his support, in essence, for the existing arrangements and his opposition to the motion. There is widespread agreement about the need for effective and efficient security services, although that agreement is not universal and, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, outside this House it has become conventional at a certain sophisticated level of commentators to ask why we need security services at all.
The reaction of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), with his sniggering and shallow quips, suggests that sympathy for the existence and objectives of the security services is questionable. However, I accept that basically there is widespread agreement on the need for effective security services, and the problem is therefore one of control. That is the longstanding problem in this as in every other democracy, and it is not one with which we can deal comfortably.


However, it is important to recognise that the problem that faced our predecessors in 1945 is not the same as that which faces us now. Today's problem is very much more difficult.
The right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) suggested that the arrangements are not sustainable, and have not been sustainable for years. I suggest that he is looking in the wrong direction. The arrangements of 1945 and 1952 are very much more necessary today. The nature of today's threat is infinitely more sophisticated and more damaging. The challenges of subversion and political warfare represent a wider range of threats to our society. That is much more significant than the simple stealing of the odd secret and dropping it in a dead-letter box, as John Le Carré describes.
We must consider the mechanism involved. The mechanism has been investigated from the time of Attlee onwards. The Maxwell Fyfe rules were established, and as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary reminded us, these have been followed by successive Governments. We have heard today from four previous Home Secretaries and from the right hon. Member for Devonport, who moved the motion, who was a Foreign Secretary. At no time during their tenures of office did they suggest any significant changes to the arrangements.
As we have learnt, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, as he now is, after he left office, made extraordinary complaints about what had happened during the first tenure of Home Secretaryship of the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Jenkins). The right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan), the then Prime Minister, completely failed to react, and told Lord Wilson that there were no problems at all. More light has now been thrown on that subject by the right hon. Member for Hillhead, who said that the action may not have been official, but perhaps it was unofficial.
There were certainly problems in the 1970s and they were problems for the Labour party. They are not today's problems. There are problems facing the administration of the security services and problems of recruitment. However, the right hon. Member for Devonport accepted that the problems with Prime and Bettaney would not have been avoided had a Security Commission existed. What on earth do the right hon. and hon. Members who have proposed the motion think that the commission will achieve? What mechanisms will be available? Those are the problems that face all security services from time to time.

Mr. Beith: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that such a Committee, perhaps before, at the same time as, or at least after these events might have found out whether MI5 positively vetted its recruits?

Mr. Whitney: Great progress has been made in security and positive vetting. It was not necessary to have an all-party Committee to achieve those aims. The improvements are in train, and I believe there are other areas where improvements can be made. The important point is that they could not have been achieved through a parliamentary Committee.
I believe that the importance of this subject is such that we must recognise that any dangers at this juncture of exposing our security services, through parliamentary scrutiny, are far greater than the dangers of the services getting out of control. I suggest that the House should take cognisance of the fact that nothing of significance in terms

of a security threat to this country has actually happened. We are experiencing a re-run of the mistakes of 20, 30 and 40 years ago.
I invite the House to consider where the threat originates. To whose advantage is it to run and re-run, and run yet again, these tired old stories? It is not to this country's advantage or to the advantage of our security services. We must take account of that. We must also take account of what has been achieved by the appointment of the new director-general and consider what internal administrative improvements might be made to aid him. The very last thing that we wish to do is to make the mistake made by other countries and open up our security services. That would destroy them.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: I had not meant to intervene in the debate, because I feel feverish. However, I must tell the House that, as I have been successful in the ballot for notices of motions, I intend to raise these matters again in my debate a week on Monday and put in context the reasons why I have been campaigning so vigorously in a way which may have unsettled many hon. Members by putting so many names on the Order Paper. I will continue to do that in future.
There is one hon. Member in the Chamber today, who has not yet caught your eye, Mr. Speaker, who I believe can tell us much about this affair. He is the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken), and he knows the truth. He knows what happened in 1980 and he knows about the involvement of Rothschild.
The hon. Member for Thanet, South wrote a letter to the Prime Minister in early 1980 of which I have seen a copy. That letter set out his reservations about the suggestions that had been made about Sir Roger Hollis, and called upon the Prime Minister to hold some inquiry, or at least to set out the position in the public domain. If I am mistaken about that, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will intervene and correct me. I believe that the Prime Minister recognised the difficulties that arose about Sir Roger Hollis by mid-1980. I believe that at that time she thought that it was in the best interests of the public that certain information should be available in the public domain.
At that time, it was not known that it would be Mr. Chapman Pincher's book that set out the nature of the accusation. I believe that the Prime Minister conspired to secure the publication of that book. I accept that many hon. Members will say that there is no evidence of that, but it is interesting that in a speech on 26 March 1981 the right hon. Lady said:
With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a statement about the security implications of the book published today that purports to give a detailed account of the investigations into the penetration of the Security Service."—[Official Report, 26 March 1981; Vol. 1, c. 1079.]
I believe that the Prime Minister knew that the book was coming out. She waited for it and the moment that it was published, she came to Parliament to make a statement. She incriminated herself in that statement, which is only relevant today—some five and a half years later—when we are faced with the crisis in the court in New South Wales.
I would like to consider what really happened. Why was no action brought in the courts to prevent publication of that book? As I understand it, two options were open to


the Government. They could have brought an action by way of civil proceedings in the courts to secure an injunction to prevent the publication of the book. My hon. Friends have argued that because it was in the public interest to take such a decision, that decision should have been taken by the Attorney-General. In that respect, he failed. However, he had another responsibility, irrespective of any views expressed by members of the Cabinet in 1981. He was able to bring a criminal prosecution in the courts. Even if all the British Cabinet felt that no action should be taken to stop publication of that book, if he believed—wearing his hat as Attorney-General—that the book broke the law because it included statements clearly drawn in default of section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911, he had an obligation to bring criminal proceedings in the courts. I do not understand how the Attorney-General can come to the Dispatch Box——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I must draw his attention to the motion before the House. I should have thought that his comments would be more appropriate to his own motion at a later date.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: You are absolutely right, Mr. Speaker. I will go into the matter in more detail on that occasion.
The thrust of today's motion is that a parliamentary Committee of both Houses should be established to oversee these matters. That is an excellent proposition and there is a precedent for it in the Committee of Privileges. That Committee is composed of senior Members of the House, many but not all of whom are Privy Councillors, who are bound by an unwritten loyalty whereby they never produce minority reports. On leaving the Committee, they never dissent from the majority view taken by the Committee and the deliberations of the Committee are never known, apart from those published in the evidence attached to its reports. In my view, that Committee shows the way in which a group of Members of Parliament of all political persuasions, working together in what they believe to be the wider interests of Parliament, could seek to secure the fullest possible consideration of these matters.

Mr. Dalyell: I do not believe it.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: My hon. Friend and I do not agree on this. A similar system operates in the German Parliament and in Canada. As the hon. and learned Member for Fylde (Sir E. Gardner) said, some Members—not particularly myself—may wish to visit other countries to see how the system works there.

Mr. Dalyell: The difference between my hon. Friend and me is that I have been before the Committee of Privileges and he has not.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: My hon. Friend may not be satisfied with the treatment that he received, but he will not know what other matters were dealt with or what other statements were given to the Committee when he was the subject of its inquiries. Some of us have confidence in that Committee's ability to take a view and I believe that it points the way forward in dealing with these matters. We cannot continue on the basis of accountability to the Home Secretary because we know from Mr. Wright, who

was directly involved in a campaign to destabilise the office of the Prime Minister in the mid-1970s, that actions can be taken which are against the national interest. I wish to ensure a system whereby parliamentary control and scrutiny are exercised, because the present system of accountability clearly does not work.

Mr. Jonathan Aitken: I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), but I shall not be led into some of the highways and byways that he seemed to suggest—although we all look forward to his debate in a few days' time to discuss those points which are perhaps more appropriate to a different motion. I simply say this by way of correction. My letter to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, to which the hon. Gentleman referred and which has been in the public domain since publication of Mr. Chapman Pincher's book, refers neither to Lord Rothschild nor to Mr. Peter Wright—at that time I had no knowledge of the roles that they played—although it refers to certain suggestions in relation to Sir Roger Hollis.
The hon. Gentleman's speech highlighted a difficulty which has bedevilled this debate. It is a pity that the idea of some form of oversight of the security services, which is sensible in principle, should be introduced on the Floor of the House at a time when there is so much hysterical and highly politicised froth about on the subject of the Wright case. I was, however, encouraged by one comment made by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, when he said that the House might wish to return to these issues in a calmer atmosphere. In some circumstances, a nod is as good as a wink in this place and I believe that the deeper subject of oversight should indeed be the subject of our attention.
There is no getting away from the fact that we are dealing with two issues which have become jumbled together. One is the short-term issue of concern about the Australian court case. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary was clearly right not to answer detailed questions about that today, as the Government are still a party to the case. The other is the long-term question—so long-term that it has been around for centuries—of who will guard the guards.
With regard to the Wright case, I believe that the Government were entirely correct in seeking to restrain security services personnel from publishing secrets in memoirs or giving them to journalists. That was an honourable and desirable objective and I support the Government in it. I fully understand their intention in principle in seeking to do that. Unfortunately, however, the tactics to secure that objective have gone badly wrong, due to a series of misjudgments and human errors. Frankly, they have created a shambles. The right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) called it a "farce" and I do not disagree with that description.
The Government's tactics, of which I have already been critical, remind me of an old strip cartoon in Punch. It begins with a rather unpleasant wasp invading a family picnic. The next picture shows the father seizing an umbrella and striking out in all directions. With a hail of inaccurate blows, he breaks the china, tramples the food, smashes the bottles and injures his children. As the wasp buzzes away, he stands among the mayhem and destruction that he has created saying, "At least that will teach the wasp a lesson."
That view of the Government's tactics is not entirely unfair. As a result of perfectly honourable but misguided tactics, far more damage has been done to the morale and reputation of our security services and to the keeping of their secrets than publication of Mr. Wright's odious book could ever have done, especially if cuts could have been agreed with the publishers Heinemann, in the national interest on grounds of current security.
The principle for which Britain has been fighting in the Australian courts is a good one, but that simple theoretical principle has been undermined in practice by Murphy's law, which I suspect will shortly be renamed "Armstrong's law" in Australian legal circles—that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Indeed, so much has gone wrong that there is really only one question left for the Government. How will it all end? How can the Government get off the hook?
Even if Britain wins the Australian case—I venture to suggest that the chances of winning on appeal in the High Court of Canberra are better than many journalistic observers seem to think—the stable door will still not be shut. The Wright case has become such a worldwide cause celebre that the book will almost certainly be published, perhaps in Ireland where there seems still to be a loophole, or in some pirate version using back-street printers in any one of a dozen locations in the world which go in for black and untraceable publishing.
My advice to the Government, therefore, is to cut their losses even though it hurts and to get into damage limitation and damage control. We should draw a line around the historical revelations relating to Sir Roger Hollis and look to the future to do what we can to secure the confidentiality of security services personnel by instituting new contracts of employment which are binding in all courts and jurisdictions and possibly retrospective agreements about the terms on which retired members of the security services receive their pensions. It means a political climbdown, but it is a step up in terms of preserving future security arrangements for the security services, the operations of which are so crucial and vital to us all.
I am sympathetic to the motion before the House. Indeed, I could hardly be otherwise, as I believe that I was the first Member to argue in the House for such a proposal during the Blunt debate in 1979.

Mr. Stuart Randall: When did the hon. Gentleman last speak to Mr. Turnbull?

Mr. Aitken: I am glad to have the opportunity to answer that question because it has been posed several times during the debate from sedentary positions, especially by the hon. Member for Workington.
The facts of the matter need be of no mystery, and they are as follows. Mr. Turnbull has had three telephone conversations with me in the last year. All three calls were placed at his instigation and the last call, which was made the day before yesterday, concerned a simple apology about something Mr. Turnbull had said in court about me, which was totally inaccurate. The other two conversations were, in effect, what is now well known—offers of terms of a possible deal for settling this case. I passed on those facts, in detail, to the Attorney-General.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Interference in the court.

Mr. Aitken: All that I can say—as I am neither a Privy Councillor nor a Leader of the Opposition, and have

been a friend of Mr. Turnbull's family for over 20 years—is that, granted that I did put everything down on paper about the two vital conversations in the memorandum to the Attorney-General, I cannot see that I have anything with which to reproach myself.
The timing of the motion is wrong, and some of the detailed arrangements—and in the speech of the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) they were left pretty blurred—are wrong. Leaving aside the method of oversight, it is right to introduce the principle of oversight of our Security Service. That welcome move would be likely to make our Security Service more, rather than less, effective.
An oversight body would be a confidential institutional replacement for what are, at present, highly personalised and individual oversight arrangements that basically rely on the personal chemistry and working methods between the Cabinet Secretary, the director-general of the Security Service and the Home Secretary. I have some confidence that those personal arrangements work well at present and that the present director-general is an exceptionally good appointment, but those arrangements have not worked so well in the past, especially in the recent past, and there is no guarantee that they will work well in the future.
The House should reflect on two episodes in recent security history and question whether they would have been better handled if an oversight body had existed. The first episode related to the long-running Hollis saga. That threw up deep divisions within MI5. A group of security officers known as the young Turks—a rather silvery-haired collection of old gentlemen these days—became deeply concerned about Soviet penetration, or alleged penetration, of MI5 at the highest level. They very much wished to bring those matters to the attention of the highest levels of the Security Service, but they had great difficulty in doing so because they believed those high levels had been penetrated.
It is wrong to portray the young Turks as obsessional old crackpots, even though one or two, especially Mr. Peter Wright, may merit that description. Some of the members of that group are deeply patriotic, highly professional security specialists who have never gone public. All they ever wanted was the chance to go to some authoritative body, other than the upper echelons of MI5, which would consider their complaint. The young Turks felt that they could not get that fair hearing because the upper echelons were, in their view, contaminated.
An extraordinary anecdote has now been published about a Mr. De Mowbray who was so burning to get his case across, that he knocked on the door of No. 10, saw a relative of his by marriage, and as a result of that was given a chance of a hearing by the Cabinet Secretary. The result of that meeting was that the Trend report eventually emerged.
If there had been a confidential outfit and forum to which those men could have gone and which would have listened to their troubles, we would never had had any of the breaches and leaks that we have had from the young Turks.
The more recent episode, the Bettaney case, preoccupied the minds of the Security Commission in May 1985. That case revealed a truly horrifying saga of personnel mismanagement in MI5. The story of how Mr. Bettaney was recruited—despite an appalling history of instability, repeated drunkenness—on one occasion he set fire to his own clothes—minor


criminal offences and in the middle of his service an idealogical conversion to Communism—approved, positively vetted, positively vetted again, promoted and eventually sent to one of MI5's most sensitive outstations dealing with Soviet subversion is a mind-boggling tale. All those defects occurred at a time when top civil servants and Ministers were supposed to be exercising vigilant oversight and tight control of MI5. Obviously, they missed something. Who on earth could say that control was adequate at the time of the Bettaney case, which was only a couple of years ago?
The Bettaney case was not just a failure of individuals, but a failure of systems, procedures, and basic man management. In the restrained prose style of the May 1985 report of the Security Commission, those failings were savagely criticised. Paragraph 8.3 states:
If it is true that the Service tends to be inflexible and resistant to change in management matters this will no doubt take time to eradicate. The necessary changes will take time to have the full effect and will be achieved only by a determined effort at the top.
I believe that that determined effort at the top has taken place with the appointment of an excellent man from outside the Security Service to become director-general.
My basic concern is that, once the impetus derived from the Security Commission report has receded and after the present director-general has retired, the old ethos, the old introspective bad habits and the self-interest of the Security Service will reassert itself. That cannot be avoided unless some new institutionalised safeguard is created. The safeguard for which I hope is that this country will, sooner or later, follow the example of all other major western democracies, especially West Germany and Canada, and set up a small, secure, oversight body to monitor the work of the intelligence community in a far more thorough way than busy Ministers have time to do.
Even if the idea is not especially well defined or crystallised in the alliance motion, the time for oversight of the security services has come. I urge the House and the Home Secretary to give it serious consideration, perhaps at a more appropriate time than today.

Mr. David Winnick: The hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) must be congratulated on being the only Conservative Member to have shown less complacency than either the Government Front Bench or other Conservative Back Benchers. The hon. Gentleman is known to favour—he has previously stated this—there being some parliamentary accountability of the Security Service. Although I have many reservations about the motion that has been tabled by the Liberal and Social Democratic parties, I have no time for the Government's amendment, which simply reiterates their confidence in the Security Service and its responsibility to Ministers.
I do not believe that the Security Service is as politically neutral as it should be. It is interesting to remember the remarks of the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Jenkins), who was Home Secretary during part of the 1970s, concerning the possibility of the Security Service acting in a way that was totally irresponsible and, indeed, criminal. I would think that that was of some relevance.
I became interested in the subject mainly because of the case of Mrs. Haigh, who lives in the west midlands, though not in my constituency. She makes no secret of the fact

that she is active in CND. She writes frequent letters to the local press, to the Ministry of Defence, and so on. It came out that Mrs. Haigh was lied to by the special branch of the police. It was a disgraceful case. Her Member of Parliament is the Secretary of State for Social Services, and it must be said to his credit that he did take up the case with the police. His initial reply from the previous chief constable of west midlands was along the lines that Mrs. Haigh was wrong. It was only as a result of that lady's persistence and the fact that the case was taken up again by the right hon. Gentleman that the chief constable admitted that the police had lied to Mrs. Haigh. Some kind of apology, for what it was worth, was given to her.
I believe that the Mrs. Haighs of this world, whether one agrees with their politics or not, are the mainstay of our democratic system. It is those who lied to her and those who put up the special branch to do so who are undermining our democratic system. That point should be borne in mind.
Inevitably, there has been a great deal of comment in the press and within the House concerning the case in Australia, but I wish also to comment on the case in Dublin. The lady who wrote the book "One Girl's War" died, I believe, two years ago. I understand that there is little in the book that has not been public knowledge for some time. It does that lady's reputation no good to give the impression that, having served her country and carried out her duties during the war years, she has betrayed her country by writing that book.
I repeat what I said during to Home Secretary's speech, that I am very pleased by the decision of the Dublin court. I certainly find it difficult to believe that the publication of that book in Ireland—I hope it will be published in due course in Britain—in any way undermines our national security. Perhaps we can have some evidence that the publication of that book is harmful to Britain's national interests. What is harmful to that interest is the way in which that case was pursued in Ireland, not to mention the long-running farce in Australia.
There may be an argument, for what it is worth, that if we paid decent pensions to some MI5 officials they would not be so keen to spill the beans. I am certainly not the defender or apologist of Mr. Wright. I doubt whether his politics are the same as mine. His motive for writing the book is indeed questionable. However, the sense in pursuing him and undertaking what is now happening in Australia is a different matter.
It must also be asked why the Cabinet Secretary initially told the Australian court that the Attorney-General had been involved in the decision five years ago over the book "Their Trade is Treachery". Surely the Cabinet Secretary of all people would know what the position was. Therefore, one must inevitably ask whether the Prime Minister put the Cabinet Secretary up to say that and to use the Attorney-General in the same way as she undoubtedly used the Solicitor-General during the Westland affair. For a Prime Minister who has always emphasised the need to respect the rule of law, she has not shown much respect this year for her Law Officers.
I do not go along with the wording of the motion, but it would be churlish of me if I omitted to say that the subject is worth while. Clearly, the interest that has been shown today demonstrates that it is a worthwhile subject to pursue, and my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) will in one way or another raise the matter again on Monday week.
It has been suggested that only Privy Councillors should sit on such a committee. I agree with the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) that some day such a committee will be formed. No one knows when, but that kind of reform will undoubtedly come. It would be unfortunate if the impression were given, however, that the only Members of the House whose patriotism could be totally relied on were Privy Councillors. I do not question their loyalty or patriotism, but what about the rest of us? Is it suggested that those of us who are proud to hold Left-wing views are somehow disloyal, that we have an affinity to a foreign state, or that we believe that the Soviet state is somehow superior to the British democratic system? Are we the likes of Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt who served in the intelligence services and betrayed their country?
We must get away from the unfortunate notion that if such a committee is formed, only Privy Councillors should be members. The time will come when such a committee will be formed to oversee the security services, and in my view its membership should be widespread and representative of the House as a whole.

Mr. Kenneth Warren: I am delighted to be called and shall be as brief as possible. I was delighted to hear my right hon. Friend say that there will be a move—I hope not in the far distant future—to follow up the commitment in the 1970 Conservative election manifesto to reform the Official Secrets Act. I also remind the House that in his report Franks said that the OSA catches people who have no thought of harming their country. When we talk of traitors we should also think of the many men and women who throughout their lives have served their country quietly and in secrecy, and whose loyalty is often the only defence of their own lives.
A real problem in relation to our security services is in the control of those services. The management standards that have been practised over the last 40 years are not sufficient for the protection of the country, and under the present system we have the seepage of people such as Peter Wright who blandly and blithely destroy obligations that they incurred and for which they have a responsibility, not only to themselves but to others who served with them.
During the past 40 years there have been incidents such as the defection of Gouzenko and the failure of Hollis to identify who Elli was. There was the failure of Hollis to discover why the man he sent to Istanbul to interview a prime Soviet defector—that man was Philby—did not do his job properly. There is also the question of why Hollis stopped investigations into who was the top Soviet spy in his own Department. All these things should have been picked up by some form of oversight, and given such repeated incidents over the past 30 or 40 years, surely this Parliament would want a control of management standards that did not allow such events to arise again.
We are repeatedly assured that it will not happen again, but it does. In the 1970s there was the case of Mr. Jock Kane of GCHQ. I was assured that with all his patriotism, which practically cost him his job, he would be looked after and that there would be no more problems. But out of the woodwork popped Mr. Prime. He was followed by Mr. Bettaney, on whom the second positive vetting was not even completed. Repeatedly, none of the management

standards are sufficient for the ordinary rank and file of the security services to believe that they are there for their protection.
There seems to be a confusion in the security services about what is secrecy and what is security. It is absolutely essential that secrecy is maintained for things that are secret, but it must not be used to protect failings in management standards. Without doubt there is no merit in a Security Commission that has no teeth. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, it does not monitor the Security Services. There is a need for audit, and I hope that it will not be long delayed.

Mr. Nicholas Soames: The real problem of parliamentary or some other form of oversight is that it might impinge on the operational capacity of the security services. I for one agree that we cannot underestimate the importance of the work of the Security Service. We live in deeply troubled times, and its work is crucial.
At the same time it is true that we as Members of Parliament put a great burden of trust for the safeguarding of national security upon the Prime Minister and Home Secretary of the day, but all previous Administrations have resisted the prospect of oversight for the security services. In my view that has proved to have been a mistake, and on re-reading the report of the Security Commission, I really believe that certain areas should be far more closely supervised. As the Security Commission said:
The very fact of the services comparative isolation makes it the more important that those responsible at the higher levels for management should maintain a self-critical attitude and be constantly alert to the need to keep the services organisation, practices and procedures under review.
Who is to audit to our satisfaction and the satisfaction of this House the progress or otherwise of the security services? No other institution of the state is subject to so little accountability. History and some recent events have proved that we have an unsatisfactory state of affairs.
In the last few days I have become convinced that a Parliamentary Select Committee is not the right answer. That is the fault of this House because of the absolute incapacity of hon. Members to maintain discretion and secrecy. We require a major effort of political will to devise a system that will provide proper accountability without damaging the operational effectiveness of the intelligence services. I believe that we should reconstitute the Security Commission from a body of hindsight to a body of oversight.
That would have a number of important advantages for the employees of the security services. First, the Security Commission is a body of impeccable standing with which the services are already familiar. Secondly, by having some measure of oversight the Security Commission would be able to look at the terms and conditions of employment and would quite probably recommend improvements and changes that would certainly have dealt with Wright. Thirdly, greater political control and more openness would mean fewer leaks and the better stewardship of those secrets that really matter. The most important point is that the Government must decide which of our secrets must be kept and then ensure that they are guarded like a tiger's cubs.
The integrity of our voice abroad and the relationships sustained by the quality of some of our intelligence is of great value to Britain. The emotional security and political


stability of the United Kingdom entitle us to an intelligence service in which we can repose great trust. That trust has recently been wounded seriously several times to the great detriment of the service and the nation. For that reason, we should consider extending and redefining the brief of the Security Commission. Is it really satisfactory, in the age of electronic intelligence, that a directive issued in 1952 is seen to be the best way of running the security services in the 1980s?
The entire process of Government in Britain is shrouded in far too much secrecy. Reforms such as those proposed today would be an important step forward. The Government should ponder this matter. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have been encouraged by what the Home Secretary has said. The Government should consider how they can best ensure the genuine accountability of this crucial service. The morale and efficiency of the Security Service of the late 1980s and onwards will depend on how we in the House reconcile accountability with security. I shall support the Government on this matter, but with some reluctance. I have confidence, but not full confidence, in the present arrangements.

Mr. A. J. Beith: Since my right hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) opened the debate, we have had ample demonstration of the interest in the subject and of the genuine concern about proper accountability for our security services. The motion has received some welcome support among Conservative Members, from the hon. and learned Member for Fylde (Sir E. Gardner), from the hon. Members for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) and for Hastings and Rye (Mr. Warren), and qualified support from the hon. Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames), and from Labour Members such as the hon. Members for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) and for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), but of course the debate has taken place against the background of events unfolded day by day in an Australian courtroom with scenes reminiscent of "Yes, Minister", which were the subject of contributions from many hon. and right hon. Members.
The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), in his best Perry Mason style, went into all this at some length. He seemed to fancy himself in the Australian courtroom for some of the time. Unfortunately, he did not address himself sufficiently to the issue in the motion. Where do we go from here? How do we ensure that there is adequate oversight of our security services?
The right hon. Gentleman was followed in debating the issues of the Australian court case by the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), the hon. Members for Workington and for Walsall, North and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Jenkins), who drew wider lessons and pointed to the unwelcome absence of the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General. I stand by the view that although the motion is not primarily directed at them, they should have been here, because they must have known to what extent matters concerning them would be raised in the debate.
In a thoughtful speech at the beginning of the debate the Home Secretary said that the issue was one to which

we could return in quieter times. That was seized upon and welcomed by some of his hon. Friends. The trouble with quieter times is that they usually do not provide the impetus for reform. They provide reassurance, which is often shattered again as soon as another case comes forward.
In 1979 I argued the case for oversight of the security services, as did the hon. Member for Thanet, South. The Liberal party has argued for that since then and has published documents on the subject, and other hon. Members have shown increasing interest in it, but it usually takes some case—some cause celebre—to raise the level of interest to the point at which people can be persuaded to re-examine it. We must carry forward the impetus that arises in troubled times if any reforms are to be achieved in quiet times.
I hope that it has been common ground in the debate that we need security services and that the work that they do is vital, especially, for example, in the prevention of terrorism and the prevention of attacks upon innocent citizens in this country. I hope that it has been common ground among most hon. Members who have spoken that the Government have reason to be worried about leaking, book publishing and the supply of material for books by ex-officers of the security services. The Government have great legal difficulty in establishing a proper basis on which to protect themselves against those breaches of confidentiality, as the recent cases have proved. It is a problem, and the Government are right to be worried about it.
However, the Government have weakened their argument on the matter, first, by excessive secrecy, to which many Members on both sides of the House referred. We keep too many things secret. It remains an absurdity that the Home Secretary should open this debate and deliberately avoid any reference to MI6, the intelligence service, and to the Foreign Secretary's responsibility for it. He studiously avoided any reference at all to it, although other hon. Members referred to it several times during the debate. Why should we pretend for a moment that we do not have, and do not need, reputable intelligence services doing a proper job and responsible to the Foreign Secretary? That is an absurd pretence. To seek to maintain it makes nonsense of the case that the Government advance for the things that we must keep secret, as they have sought to do in various court cases.
The Government weakened their case also by selective prosecution, as was argued earlier in the debate, and by seeking to distinguish between officers who write books and those who supply material for other people's books, even with payment. That distinction does not stand up and it has weakened the Government's case. Most germane to the motion, the Government have weakened their case by their failure to provide an alternative route for grievances. That was the burden of the comments made by the hon. and learned Member for Fylde, and it was echoed by other hon. Members.
I questioned the Home Secretary on the internal mechanism for officers who have a grievance and a sense that something is going wrong. It appeared that even that problem has not yet been resolved and is still under discussion. But we need more than that. We need some external mechanism by which we can be satisfied with the operation of the security services. The present arrangements are a source of real frustration and they have allowed incompetence to operate. They have allowed


treachery and penetration of the services and left wide open the possibility for illegal and unauthorised operations to take place.
Many long-serving, loyal officers in the security services are as frustrated by this position as is anyone who makes such comments from outside the service. The anxiety to do something about those matters is as great among people who know and are experienced in the services as it is among outside critics. There are needs which must be satisfied. There is a need for greater confidence and public support for the work that the security services are doing, a legitimate avenue for grievances and a chance for the security services to get their problems understood. As the Liaison Committee said when it argued that Select Committees of the House have a right to enter that area, if they exercise that right, they give the security services an opportunity to put the record straight.
The right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) and the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Whitney) asked what a commission such as we propose could do. It should not, of course, exercise operational control of the security services, any more than Ministers are supposed to do. That would be quite wrong. However, it could exercise oversight. I am sure that both those Members understand the distinction between oversight and operational control. It can carry on the work of the Security Commission, in which there is now no continuity, as the Home Secretary pointed out. There is no follow-on from a recommendation of the Security Commission in terms of a continuing interest by the same body in those issues, unless it is referred to again in a subsequent case.
There is plenty of scope; and the Select Committees of the House provide illustrations of the areas where the commission can operate, although they do not provide a model. The existing work of the Select Committees clearly cannot be the exact model for a body that must operate in a much more restricted way. In his speech the Home Secretary proposed three tests: that the machinery should be able to maintain secrecy, that it should be able to maintain public confidence, and that it should not blunt the responsibility of Ministers. The procedure that we are suggesting can pass all those tests. The Home Secretary asked whether such a body should go inside the boundary line of secrecy. Of course it should, as the special Franks Commission on the Falklands did. It had to go inside that boundary line. It was allowed to do so and it was essential to its work.
It cannot conceivably be claimed that our allies would be unable to co-operate with our security services if they had such a mechanism. Our allies have analogous mechanisms to these. Congress is used to such a system. The Canadians are developing their own system. Oversight is accepted as a part of life by our allies.
We have tabled a motion, and there is a Government amendment. It is a pity that the Labour party did not come out in full support or indeed give a clear sign of what it will do. If Labour Members have been recommended to abstain, as I believe they have, that is a mistake. They should come out in support of a proposition which several Labour Members have said they would like to see be put into operation.
I am concerned with the amendment, which states:
That this House has full confidence in the present arrangements whereby the Security Service is responsible to Ministers.

Those are very complacent words. They might have been feasible in a world in which we had never had Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, Long, Bettaney or Prime. They might have been reasonable in a world in which Prime Ministers had not been set before the Dispatch Box and briefed to make statements which they subsequently found to be false or misleading through no fault of their own. That happened not only to the Earl of Stockton, but to the present Prime Minister.
There is now wide recognition that the arrangements currently in operation are insufficient. The crucial point is that accountability to Ministers depends on the accountability of Ministers to Parliament. Whether Ministers ask questions about a matter for which they are responsible is frequently related to the extent to which they will themselves be asked questions about it, and the extent to which they are aware that the matters will be probed by someone else. In security matters, it cannot be the case that those questions will flow in detail day after day on the Floor of the House. We must provide another mechanism by which we give a parliamentary buttress to ministerial responsibility. That is the purpose of the commission that we have proposed.
The Prime Minister has as good a reason as anyone to know the need for change. She has been placed before the Dispatch Box with a misleading brief and been invited to put it before the House. She should have been here to listen to the debate. Now is the time to abandon her extraordinary and cherished doctrine that one should never learn from experience. That is one of the most mistaken doctrines upon which her activities are based. She has had enough experience of these matters to know that change is necessary. We have put before the House a motion designed to secure that change, and I invite hon. Members to support it.

The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): It is only on rare occasions that the House discusses security matters, as will be well understood. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Whitney) reminded us of the reasons why we should be reticent in these affairs. However, at the outset, although I have no wish to diminish party controversy, I should say that the House should appreciate the way in which the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) introduced the debate and the terms of the motion. It suggests that we should concentrate upon an important, but restricted view of the organisation of our defence services and that we should avoid some of the more exotic distractions that come from Sydney, New South Wales.
The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), who has explained why he cannot be here for my reply—[HON. MEMBERS: "Where is he?"] He has explained with total courtesy why he cannot be here. I can best characterise his speech in as Delphic a fashion as possible, by saying that it was characteristic.
The right hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Jenkins), in a totally different manner—indeed, a most elegant manner—tried to widen the debate by talking not merely about the organisation of the security services but about whether their terms of reference were appropriate in contemporary circumstances.
I shall confine myself more narrowly to a consideration of the proposition that a joint Committee of both Houses,


to be known as the Special Commission on the Security Services, should be appointed. In doing so, I must follow the course of the debate, which has revealed twin principles and the challenge that they represent. The first was elaborated by the right hon. Member for Devonport. He said that we must have effective security services and that, in so doing, we should realise that it necesitates secrecy.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary elaborated on that point, when he talked of the barrier of secrecy which must cocoon those who lie at the centre of and are responsible for the direction of this activity of utmost national importance. Parallel with that principle is the desire for parliamentary accountability which will be exercised in such a way as not to impair the working efficiency of security services.
Those two broad principles, which will be entertained throughout the House, cannot be held easily in parallel application. Indeed, much of the debate has concerned the challenge of reconciling those propositions.
Several hon. Members were not slow to identify the difficulties with the membership of the proposed body. The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) observed trenchantly that it would be unwise to place too great a premium upon Privy Councillors in these affairs, and he was joined in that agnosticism by the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick). My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fylde (Sir E. Gardner) thought that the proposed commission was inappropriate, but that we should have a complaints commission. My right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion, (Mr. Amery), in a most impressive and formidable speech, elaborated on the difficulties of proliferating committees and bodies in this area and, above all, on the importance of those who must carry out the work of the security services believing that there would not be an excess of ill-determined oversight.

Mr. Dalyell: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves the question of agnosticism, may I remind him of the specific question that was asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) and me, about why Lord Rothschild should invite Mr. Peter Wright to write a book, and specifically about dealings between the Prime Minister and Lord Rothschild. Would the right hon. Gentleman care to answer that question?

Mr. Biffen: I heard the question from the Front Bench and from the Back Bench and I quite understood it. It bore a clear relationship to the proceedings in Sydney, New South Wales, and on that basis I am not prepared to make any further observations.
May I return to the debate? I have elaborated, I hope reasonably fairly, on the support for and the reservations that have been expressed about the membership of the commission. I ask the House to share with me some philosophic considerations of how such a body might operate. First, would the proposed commission share the inhibitions of secrecy that restrict the Government in such matters? I understand from the right hon. Member for Devonport that that is the intention. In that case, the commission would lie within the cocoon of secrecy, which would cast some doubts on whether it could reassure the House and, more importantly, the general political processes more effectively than they are reassured under the present system. That is the first practical consideration.
Of course, there is the reverse consideration, that the commission would not share with the Government the advantages and the inhibitions of secrecy. In that case, we would be anxious about the extent to which it could judge and monitor the execution of policy in this area.
Those are some philosophic doubts about the proposition contained in the motion. I shall put to the House one practical consideration. Although the motion carefully does not mention departmental Select Committees, the concept of such Committees has been mentioned during the debate. The right hon. Member for Devonport used the concept of the Select Committees on Foreign Affairs and Defence when he intervened to say how we might fashion our security arrangements.
What I say about the operation of Committees that rely for their authority on their ability to send for persons and papers is that we have a long-established practice that civil servants who appear before those Committees do not divulge advice given to Ministers. Are we to believe that this committee, given its unique responsibility, will proceed with that long-established function? Or, do we think that the Committee will want it modified? If it wants the function modified, it will be entering into the field of directly sharing that function with those who currently have the executive responsibility for those services. Far from bringing clarity to the situation, that runs the danger of bringing confusion.
The House has had a good chance to listen to the debate and I am the only speaker to lie between the House and the denouement of Liberal defence policy that is to follow.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made a fair and measured speech—[Interruption.]—in which he gave the compelling exposition that has so discomfited the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes). We know perfectly well that he will adopt the heroic stance of abstention.
This is a serious and challenging problem and we have debated it in a mature fashion this afternoon, but we are correct to believe that it will be a continuing debate.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

The House divided: Ayes 24, Noes 232.

Division No. 18]
[7.20 pm


AYES


Ashdown, Paddy
Owen, Rt Hon Dr David


Beith, A. J.
Penhaligon, David


Bruce, Malcolm
Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Shields, Mrs Elizabeth


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Steel, Rt Hon David


Freud, Clement
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


Hancock, Michael
Wainwright, R.


Howells, Geraint
Wallace, James


Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Wigley, Dafydd


Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Kennedy, Charles



Kirkwood, Archy
Tellers for the Ayes: 


Livsey, Richard
Mr. David Alton and


Meadowcroft, Michael
Mr. John Cartwright.




NOES


Adley, Robert
Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Vall'y)


Aitken, Jonathan
Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)


Alexander, Richard
Baldry, Tony


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Batiste, Spencer


Amery, Rt Hon Julian
Beaumont-Dark, Anthony


Ancram, Michael
Bellingham, Henry


Ashby, David
Best, Keith


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Bevan, David Gilroy


Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)
Biffen, Rt Hon John






Biggs-Davison, Sir John
Hayes, J.


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Hayward, Robert


Body, Sir Richard
Heath, Rt Hon Edward


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Heathcoat-Amory, David


Bottomley, Peter
Heddle, John


Bottomley, Mrs Virginia
Henderson, Barry


Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Hickmet, Richard


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Hicks, Robert


Bright, Graham
Hind, Kenneth


Brinton, Tim
Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)


Brooke, Hon Peter
Holt, Richard


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Howard, Michael


Browne, John
Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)


Bruinvels, Peter
Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)


Bryan, Sir Paul
Hubbard-Miles, Peter


Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)


Buck, Sir Antony
Hunter, Andrew


Budgen, Nick
Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas


Butcher, John
Irving, Charles


Butler, Rt Hon Sir Adam
Jackson, Robert


Butterfill, John
Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick


Carlisle, John (Luton N)
Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Jones, Robert (Herts W)


Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (W'ton S)
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine


Carttiss, Michael
Key, Robert


Cash, William
King, Rt Hon Tom


Chalker, Mrs Lynda
Knight, Greg (Derby N)


Chapman, Sydney
Knowles, Michael


Chope, Christopher
Knox, David


Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)
Lamont, Rt Hon Norman


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Lang, Ian


Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)
Latham, Michael


Colvin, Michael
Lawler, Geoffrey


Conway, Derek
Lawrence, Ivan


Coombs, Simon
Lee, John (Pendle)


Cope, John
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Cormack, Patrick
Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)


Couchman, James
Lightbown, David


Cranborne, Viscount
Lilley, Peter


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)


Dickens, Geoffrey
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)


Dorrell, Stephen
Lord, Michael


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.
Macfarlane, Neil


du Cann, Rt Hon Sir Edward
MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)


Dunn, Robert
McLoughlin, Patrick


Dykes, Hugh
McQuarrie, Albert


Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)
Madel, David


Evennett, David
Malone, Gerald


Fairbairn, Nicholas
Marland, Paul


Fallon, Michael
Marlow, Antony


Farr, Sir John
Mather, Carol


Fletcher, Alexander
Mellor, David


Fookes, Miss Janet
Mills, Iain (Meriden)


Forsyth Michael (Stirling)
Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)


Franks, Cecil
Neale, Gerrard


Fraser, Peter (Angus East)
Nelson, Anthony


Freeman, Roger
Neubert, Michael


Gale, Roger
Newton, Tony


Gardiner, George (Reigate)
Normanton, Tom


Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)
Norris, Steven


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Page, Richard (Herts SW)


Glyn, Dr Alan
Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil


Goodhart, Sir Philip
Pollock, Alexander


Goodlad, Alastair
Portillo, Michael


Gorst, John
Powley, John


Greenway, Harry
Price, Sir David


Gregory, Conal
Proctor, K. Harvey


Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)
Raison, Rt Hon Timothy


Grist, Ian
Rathbone, Tim


Ground, Patrick
Renton, Tim


Grylls, Michael
Rhodes James, Robert


Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)
Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey


Hanley, Jeremy
Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)


Hannam, John
Robinson, Mark (N'port W)


Hargreaves, Kenneth
Roe, Mrs Marion


Harris, David
Rost, Peter


Haselhurst, Alan
Rowe, Andrew


Hawkins, C. (High Peak)
Sackville, Hon Thomas





Sainsbury, Hon Timothy
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.
Tracey, Richard


Sayeed, Jonathan
Twinn, Dr Ian


Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)
van Straubenzee, Sir W.


Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
Waddington, David


Shelton, William (Streatham)
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)
Waldegrave, Hon William


Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)
Walden, George


Shersby, Michael
Waller, Gary


Silvester, Fred
Wardle, C. (Bexhill)


Sims, Roger
Warren, Kenneth


Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)
Watson, John


Soames, Hon Nicholas
Watts, John


Speller, Tony
Wells, Bowen (Hertford)


Spencer, Derek
Wells, Sir John (Maidstone)


Stanley, Rt Hon John
Wheeler, John


Steen, Anthony
Whitney, Raymond


Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)
Wiggin, Jerry


Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Stewart, Ian (Hertf'dshire N)
Winterton, Nicholas


Stradling Thomas, Sir John
Wolfson, Mark


Tapsell, Sir Peter
Wood, Timothy


Taylor, John (Solihull)
Woodcock, Michael


Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)
Yeo, Tim


Temple-Morris, Peter
Younger, Rt Hon George


Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.



Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)
Tellers for the Noes:


Thurnham, Peter
Mr. Tony Durant and


Townend, John (Bridlington)
Mr. Francis Maude.

Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 30 (Question on amendments):—

The House proceeded to a Division:—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Will the Serjeant at Arms please find out the reason for the delay in the Lobby, and report back?

The House having divided: Ayes 203, Noes 45.

Division No. 19]
[7.32 pm


AYES


Alexander, Richard
Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (W'ton S)


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Carttiss, Michael


Amery, Rt Hon Julian
Cash, William


Ancram, Michael
Chalker, Mrs Lynda


Ashby, David
Chapman, Sydney


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Chope, Christopher


Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)
Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)


Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Vall'y)
Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)


Batiste, Spencer
Colvin, Michael


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Conway, Derek


Bellingham, Henry
Coombs, Simon


Benyon, William
Cope, John


Best, Keith
Cormack, Patrick


Biffen, Rt Hon John
Couchman, James


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Cranborne, Viscount


Body, Sir Richard
Currie, Mrs Edwina


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Dickens, Geoffrey


Bottomley, Mrs Virginia
Dorrell, Stephen


Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
du Cann, Rt Hon Sir Edward


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Dunn, Robert


Bright, Graham
Durant, Tony


Brinton, Tim
Dykes, Hugh


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Evennett, David


Browne, John
Fairbairn, Nicholas


Bruinvels, Peter
Farr, Sir John


Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.
Fletcher, Alexander


Buck, Sir Antony
Fookes, Miss Janet


Budgen, Nick
Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)


Burt, Alistair
Franks, Cecil


Butler, Rt Hon Sir Adam
Fraser, Peter (Angus East)


Butterfill, John
Freeman, Roger


Carlisle, John (Luton N)
Gale, Roger


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Gardiner, George (Reigate)






Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)
Madel, David


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Marland, Paul


Glyn, Dr Alan
Marlow, Antony


Goodhart, Sir Philip
Mather, Carol


Goodlad, Alastair
Maude, Hon Francis


Gorst, John
Mayhew, Sir Patrick


Gower, Sir Raymond
Mellor, David


Greenway, Harry
Mills, Iain (Meriden)


Gregory, Conal
Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)


Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)
Miscampbell, Norman


Ground, Patrick
Neale, Gerrard


Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)
Nelson, Anthony


Hanley, Jeremy
Neubert, Michael


Hargreaves, Kenneth
Newton, Tony


Harris, David
Normanton, Tom


Haselhurst, Alan
Norris, Steven


Hawkins, C. (High Peak)
Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil


Hayes, J.
Pollock, Alexander


Hayward, Robert
Portillo, Michael


Heddle, John
Powley, John


Henderson, Barry
Price, Sir David


Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael
Proctor, K. Harvey


Hickmet, Richard
Rathbone, Tim


Hicks, Robert
Renton, Tim


Hind, Kenneth
Rhodes James, Robert


Holt, Richard
Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm


Howard, Michael
Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey


Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)
Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)


Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)
Robinson, Mark (N'port W)


Hubbard-Miles, Peter
Rowe, Andrew


Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)
Sackville, Hon Thomas


Hunter, Andrew
Sainsbury, Hon Timothy


Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas
St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.


Irving, Charles
Sayeed, Jonathan


Jackson, Robert
Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')


Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick
Shelton, William (Streatham)


Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


Jones, Robert (Herts W)
Shersby, Michael


Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine
Silvester, Fred


Key, Robert
Sims, Roger


Knight, Greg (Derby N)
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


Knowles, Michael
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Knox, David
Speller, Tony


Lang, Ian
Spencer, Derek


Latham, Michael
Stanley, Rt Hon John


Lawler, Geoffrey
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


Lawrence, Ivan
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


Lee, John (Pendle)
Stradling Thomas, Sir John


Lightbown, David
Tapsell, Sir Peter


Lilley, Peter
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Temple-Morris, Peter


Macfarlane, Neil
Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.


McLoughlin, Patrick
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


McQuarrie, Albert
Thurnham, Peter





Townend, John (Bridlington)
Wells, Sir John (Maidstone)


Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)
Wheeler, John


Tracey, Richard
Whitney, Raymond


Twinn, Dr Ian
Wiggin, Jerry


van Straubenzee, Sir W.
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Waddington, David
Winterton, Nicholas


Wakeham, Rt Hon John
Wolfson, Mark


Waldegrave, Hon William
Wood, Timothy


Walden, George
Yeo, Tim


Waller, Gary
Younger, Rt Hon George


Walters, Dennis



Wardle, C. (Bexhill)
Tellers for the Ayes:


Warren, Kenneth
Mr. Mark Lennox-Boyd and


Watts, John
Mr. Gerald Malone.


Wells, Bowen (Hertford)





NOES


Alton, David
McKelvey, William


Ashdown, Paddy
Madden, Max


Ashton, Joe
Maynard, Miss Joan


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Meadowcroft, Michael


Beith, A. J.
Michie, William


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Nellist, David


Bruce, Malcolm
Owen, Rt Hon Dr David


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Penhaligon, David


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Pike, Peter


Cartwright, John
Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)


Clay, Robert
Shields, Mrs Elizabeth


Cohen, Harry
Skinner, Dennis


Corbyn, Jeremy
Steel, Rt Hon David


Freud, Clement
Strang, Gavin


Hamilton, W. W. (Fife Central)
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


Hancock, Michael
Wainwright, R.


Heffer, Eric S.
Wareing, Robert


Howells, Geraint
Wigley, Dafydd


Hoyle, Douglas
Winnick, David


Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Kennedy, Charles



Kirkwood, Archy
Tellers for the Noes:


Lewis, Terence (Worsley)
Mr. Simon Hughes and


Livsey, Richard
Mr. James Wallace.


Loyden, Edward

Question accordingly agreed to.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House has full confidence in the present arrangements whereby the Security Service is responsible to Ministers.

Defence

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): I should inform the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment standing in the Prime Minister's name.

Mr. Jerry Hayes: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance, as do many other Conservative Members, on what procedures are available for there to be an emergency suspension of this sitting for a few minutes. I understand that the Labour party abstained on the last vote, and will abstain on the next vote, and it may wish to have some time to ring Mr. Turnbull in Australia to obtain some instructions.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is a matter for argument, but it is not a matter for the Chair.

Mr. David Steel: I beg to move,
That this House reaffirms its support for Britain's continued membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation; and believes that membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the security of Britain are incompatible with a policy which combines the unilateral abandonment of Britain's nuclear deterrent, the expulsion from Britain of the United States nuclear contribution to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the rejection of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's long-standing policy of maintaining both conventional and nuclear deterrence whilst pursuing negotiated disarmament.
Incidentally, Mr. Deputy Speaker, we have just seen your admirable use of the deterrent theory applied to Labour Members, and I congratulate you on using it so effectively. It is interesting that Labour Members should be so frightened of debating their policy in the House that they have sought to limit this debate to the shortest possible time.
But I begin by tackling the amendment tabled by the Prime Minister. If the words are changed around, they are broadly in line with the words in our motion, except for the sentence that seeks to criticise, and
rejects…the policies of the Liberal and Social Democratic Parties, which advocate the maintenance of a British nuclear capability below the minimum required to provide effective deterrence beyond the mid 1990s".
That sentence apparently makes two claims: first that our policy of deterrence would be ineffective and, secondly, that the Government have some knowledge about the state of the world beyond the mid-1990s which, I must confess, is certainly denied to me.
But it is worth concentrating for a moment on the Government's amendment. I start with what I hope is an agreed and obvious statement. One of the first obligations of Government is to provide effectively for the defence of the country. There is no question about that. We have never doubted that that is the Government's motivation and purpose, although we may disagree with them about particular decisions that they make within that framework and about particular weapons systems to which they seem attached.
I hope that the Government would also agree that there is a second obligation on any Government in this country, and that is to use their best endeavours to turn down the ratchet of the arms race and, in particular, of the nuclear arms race. It is on the second part of that heavy obligation to the public that I believe that the Government can be faulted.
The concern about the increased development of nuclear weapons, both in their capacity and quantity, on both sides of the iron curtain is not a concern limited to a few pressure groups or a few people who march on wet Saturday afternoons. There is a genuine public concern, which is even greater now in the wake of the Chernobyl accident. It is born of anxiety not that militaristic Governments, whether here, in the Soviet Union or in the United States, will suddenly unleash nuclear war on the world, but that the more of these weapons that there are about, and the more sophisticated they are, the greater is the risk of some terrible accident befalling us.
Any responsible Government must be heavily motivated towards tackling this problem in a coherent and effective manner. As a firm believer in multilateral disarmament, I have to say that those of us who are multilateralists do not have much to show for our longstanding faith. That is why it is important, whether we look as far forward as the mid-1990s or just to the next two years, for the electorate to know that there will be a Government that are prepared to make a constructive and positive contribution to a reduction in the nuclear arms race. Instead, they find themselves faced with a British Government that are committed unilaterally to increasing the nuclear arms race through the escalation of the Trident programme.

Mr. Patrick Thompson: rose—

Mr. Steel: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for not giving way, but the debate was late in starting, and I have not even finished my first point.
I read the speech made by the Secretary of State for Defence in the debate that we had two or three weeks ago, and I noticed his reaction to interjections and interventions about the two-stage disarmament programme on which the super-power leaders have set themselves. The theory is that, over the next decade, in two stages, Mr. Gorbachev and Mr. Reagan might succeed between them in moving towards a completely non-nuclear world. That theory is greeted by the Secretary of State for Defence with a certain amount of understandable scepticism, but when asked what contribution Britain would make to this, he said that if the super-powers made a great deal of headway, we would consider joining them. There was no sense of initiative or direction from the British Government to make this process become a reality. I strongly object to that.
This attitude was shown most clearly not by the speech made by the Secretary of State for Defence but by the action of the Prime Minister. She rushed off to Washington to try to protect the Trident programme, even at the cost of coming to a foolish political deal with her friend the President of the United States, and agreeing to support his stance on arms shipments to Iran in return for a guarantee that the Trident programme would still be about in years to come. In other words, there is a nervousness that there might somehow be a super-power success that would result in the cancellation of the Trident programme, a prospect that terrifies the British Government. I noticed the other day a report in the Daily Telegraph, which can hardly be accused of being a subversive, Left-wing newspaper, that the Government are actively looking at non-Trident alternatives to maintaining a deterrent, in case that event should come about. In the


meantime, the Prime Minister's attitude is that we must hang on to the Trident programme, come what may and regardless of the criticisms that have been made of it.
I criticised the phrase "the mid 1990s" because we must proceed on the basis that the world is not necessarily going to be the same in the mid-1990s as it is now. We must hope, and the alliance is not ashamed to hope, for a change in the American Administration. Even now, looking at the remainder of this American Administration, it is possible to see, out of the wreckage of Reykjavik, some new initiative which may yet lead to major reductions on both sides, and which would be the first major breakthrough in global nuclear arms reduction.
For all these reasons, we started from an important point of disagreement with the Government. We have always advocated the case that Europe as a whole, and Britain in particular, should maintain a minimum deterrent capacity. The Secretary of State and I have argued this point in broadcasts on many occasions, and no doubt we shall continue to do so. The basis of our argument is that he believes that it is essential that in the future Britain will maintain a deterrent capability equivalent almost to that of the United States, to be able to take out Moscow if need be.
We do not share that analysis. Because of the superiority of conventional weapons on the Warsaw pact side, it is necessary to have some deterrent capacity in Western Europe that is independent of the United States, although linked with it. A deterrent that is capable of inflicting unacceptable damage on a potential aggressor, and thereby deterring that aggression from taking place, is different from the Trident programme, which is designed to be equal to something that the United States can deliver and to duplicate an ability that it already has to attack Moscow. That is not necessary.
As long as superior Warsaw pact forces face us and as long as there is a question mark over whether the United States guarantee in Western Europe will remain indefinitely—a question mark that has been raised by many sources from Henry Kissinger to Sam Nunn most recently—it is prudent for Britain, in her present state of non-success of arms reduction talks, to maintain its capacity at a minimal level. That is clearly our policy.

Dr. Alan Glyn: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps the needs of the United States and ourselves may not be the same, and it is essential that we keep the Trident programme, which protects us, but not so much the Americans?

Mr. Steel: I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. the only point in maintaining a deterrent capacity is the threat of a superior conventional force that we wish to deter. That is the only reason for maintaining any independence; otherwise why do we bother to have a NATO alliance? The motion is about the effectiveness of the NATO alliance.
As long as the Polaris system exists, and continues with its modernisations, there is little problem in maintaining this position, but it becomes more difficult as Polaris comes to the end of its useful life. It is no secret that that has caused us some little problem in recent weeks and month, and there has been a serious debate. I put it to the Secretary of State that the more that I discuss this, whether with academics in the defence sector or with ex-defence chiefs or others who have strong views on this subject, the

more I find that there are zealous advocates of particular post-Polaris solutions for a minimum deterrent. They all have one thing in common. They are all so zealous for their own solution that they reject all others.
It is for that reason that I, as leader of the Liberal party, and my colleague the leader of the SDP, feel that Admiral Lewin, whatever the value of his other criticisms, is right to say that the precise weapon systems are the ones that should be made and chosen by the Government in office at the right time. It is not for Opposition parties to decide, clouded as they are with conflicting advice and denied information available to Government. I am glad to see the Secretary of State nod agreement.

Mr. Patrick Thompson: rose—

Mr. Steel: I have given way once, and I wish to make a short speech.
As the Secretary of State for Defence has, on previous occasions, challenged me to say what the options are, I propose to do so. I do so with the safeguard of saying that I frequently criticise some of my colleagues for making speeches on the options, because it is extremely difficult to do so without giving the appearance of being an ardent salesman for one or the other. I am not a salesman for any of them. I hope that the political and international conditions will be such, looking forward to the mid-1990s, that none of these options will be necessary. Nevertheless, we must prepare them and trawl through them.
There are six options. The first is extending the life of the existing Polaris submarines and missiles to allow continuation well into the next century. This has its drawbacks, but it is possible and has strong advocates. The second is the fitting of M4 French missiles into Vickers submarine hulls. Again this has been discussed on many occasions. The third is that British Aerospace has the capability to produce a new British ballistic missile if the Government so choose. The fourth is the purchase of American cruise missiles to be fitted either into penetration aircraft such as Tornado or to a large standoff aircraft such as a converted Airbus. The fifth is that American cruise missiles could be fitted either into Vickers submarines or into SSNs. The sixth is that British Aerospace has the capability to develop a Euro-cruise missile. It has been studying that possibility for some time, and joint co-operation with the French on that project could be feasible. I have been through these discussions on enough occasions to understand that each one of these options can be taken and dissected, and that its advocates, even within the Ministry of Defence—I have no doubt that the Secretary of State has sat through as many meetings on these options as I have—can pursue the case in favour of it to its logical conclusion.
I am saying that we do not have to take the decision now, and that there should be no pressure on the Government to take it. It is a decision, however, that may face the next Government or the one after that. That is the position on which I rest, and that is the basic disagreement between myself and the Government on the phrase "a minimum effective deterrent".

Mr. John Powley: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Steel: No, I shall not give way. I want to make progress and to make some other points.
I turn to the motion itself—

Sir Antony Buck: Before the right hon. Gentleman does so, will he allow me to intervene?

Mr. Steel: I shall give way to the chairman of the Back-Bench committee on defence.

Sir Antony Buck: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be kind enough to indicate his preferred solution before he addresses the motion.

Mr. Steel: I shall be frank with the hon. Gentleman. I have a preferred option, as I am sure most people have who take an interest in these matters, but I do not intend to tell him which one it is. I believe that it is not a decision that should be taken by politicians who are in opposition. I cite in support of that belief the article which Admiral Lewin wrote which appeared in The Guardian only the other day. I agree with Admiral Lewin on that score.
I wish now to address the motion, having dealt with——

Mr. Powley: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way now?

Mr. Steel: No, I am not giving way. [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman has made it clear on more than one occasion that he does not intend to give way again.

Mr. Steel: The motion refers to the future of NATO policy, and that is the subject of the debate. It is proper that in this place the different political parties should bring forward different proposals for changing the policy on NATO, but it is unacceptable to abandon unilaterally the British nuclear deterrent capacity and to expel the United States nuclear bases from within the United Kingdom. It is the combination of the two acts that renders the continued cohesion of NATO impossible, in my view.
I have some good authorities for that proposition, of which I shall quote two. The first is as follows:
Whether we like it or not, it is the stability of the military balance between NATO and the Warsaw powers which has kept Europe at peace for over 30 years when 20 million people have been killed in wars outside Europe. NATO's nuclear strategy is an essential part of that balance. To threaten to upset that balance by refusing to let America base any of her nuclear weapons in Britain would make war more likely, not less, by tempting America into other and more dangerous strategies in which she was less dependent on the co-operation of her European allies.
That is part of a speech which was delivered by the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Healey) to the Labour party's policy school in 1981.

Mr. Michael Meadowcroft: Did my right hon. Friend intend to refer to the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey)?

Mr. Steel: Yes. I am sure that my hon. Friend subscribes to the right hon. Gentleman's view as well.
The simple question is what has changed over the past six years to make that analysis wrong. If it was right in 1981, why is it not right now? I shall refer in part to the statements made by the deputy leader of the Labour party in 1983 when he, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), was analysing what went wrong with his party's policy in the general election. The first part of his statement has been quoted frequently but the second part is equally important. He said:
We said that NATO remained our protection. But we refused to accept our NATO obligations.

That is it in a nutshell. If we believe that NATO should be our protection, it is necessary to maintain our NATO obligations.
Why is it that the right hon. Member for Leeds, East, who has served in a Labour Government as Secretary for Defence, and the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook, who has served as a Foreign Office Minister, allowed the present leader of the Labour party to go on such an extraordinary tour around the United States, which could be subtitled "Death of a Salesman"? The right hon. Members for Leeds, East and for Sparkbrook know perfectly well the policy that Britain requires if it is to remain a member of NATO. They know that it is impossible to square the circle. It is possible to adopt a policy of abandoning entirely all nuclear weapons, or all weapons, if that is what one wishes——

Mr. Patrick Thompson: rose——

Mr. Steel: No, I am not giving way.
It is possible to opt for that abandonment, but it would not then be possible to remain a loyal member of NATO.
Over the past four months I have talked to seven Foreign and Defence Ministers in Europe and not one of them believes that it is possible to pursue an abandonment policy and for NATO to remain intact as it is now That is the view of our European allies across the political spectrum, across the divide.
There is nothing wrong with Members of this place and parties hoping to find political friends in the United States and hoping that the policies of one Government may change for another. Equally, there is no harm in hoping to enjoy a close relationship with those who may be in power in Washington. The Prime Minister had done precisely that with the present occupant of the White House. That has led us down strange avenues at times, with Libya, Iran, and an excessive worship of free market policies, but I do not criticise the basic strength of the political alliance.
Similarly, it is reasonable for Opposition parties to look for friends and allies in the United States. Over the past few months I have warmly welcomed the decision of the Democratic Institute to join Liberal International. Under that umbrella I have enjoyed conversations on these issues with people such as Walter Mondale and Senator Hart. They too have no time for the policy that is being advocated by the Opposition.
Congressman Solarz is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a regular friend and visitor to this Parliament. In a letter to me the other day he made it clear that the American people
could hardly be expected to permit US forces to remain in Europe if we were stripped of our capacity to deter and, if necessary, defeat an attack against them".
That is it in a nutshell. If we do not allow the United States to have bases in Britain, why should we expect them to maintain forces in Europe to help to protect us? Let us remember that Senator Sam Munn's amendment was defeated only narrowly when it was put to the vote in the American Congress.
There is no serious body of United States political opinion which supports the Opposition's policy. The task of any future Government should be to seek to increase our influence in Washington and to strengthen the European pillar of NATO. The Washington Post, in a telling editorial that was printed on the day that the Leader of the Opposition arrived in the United States, said this:


The strength of the Western alliance has never been purely or even primarily military. It has always depended on qualities of spirit and political conviction to which the European's contributions have been essential.
The reason for our motion is that we fear very much that if we are not careful there could be a future Government of this country that would not be prepared to make any such contribution.

The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. George Younger): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
rejects the non-nuclear defence policies of the Labour Party, based as they are on the abandonment of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, the expulsion of United States nuclear forces and bases from Britain, and the withdrawal of Britain from the protection of the American nuclear umbrella, thus jeopardising the United Kingdom's security and the cohesion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation; and the policies of the Liberal and Social Democratic Parties, which advocate the maintenance of a British nuclear capability below the minimum required to provide effective deterrence beyond the mid 1990s; and reaffirms its support for the Government's firm defence policies founded on the need to maintain credible nuclear and conventional forces for Britain within the NATO Alliance.".
I am nearer to being struck speechless at the beginning of contributing to a debate in this place than I have ever been before. That is the state in which I find myself after the truly extraordinary speech of the leader of the Liberal party, the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Etterick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel). He appears to have embarked on an odd exercise. This is one of the rare occasions on which the right hon. Gentleman can choose a subject to be debated on the Floor of the House, and he has chosen a subject in the recognition that the country has been longing for weeks, indeed for months, to learn what, if anything, is the Liberal party's policy on defence. Against that background, he has tabled a motion in which the Liberal party's policies on defence are not mentioned. I did not think that the right hon. Gentleman could cap that extraordinary feat, but he has done so by the unusually extraordinary speech which he delivered in opening the debate, about which I shall make one or two brief comments.
The right hon. Gentleman complained that the Government should be criticised for there not being any drive towards increased emphasis on arms control and a reduction in weapons. Where has he been for the last few months? There is more discussion and more debate, and more effort is being made by the negotiators for arms reduction today than there has been for 25 or 30 years. That is entirely because the Government and their allies in the West, from a position of strength, have insisted on forcing the Soviet Union back to the negotiating table. If the right hon. Gentleman does not understand that, he simply cannot be giving any attention to the matters that face the country.
The right hon. Gentleman said that he was a firm believer in multinational disarmament. Jolly good. What did he say to the Liberal party assembly in Llandudno in 1981? He said:
The Liberal Party in Parliament, especially in future, in government, must take heed of that mood and use its best efforts to promote unilateral disarmament.
He then went on to say that he was quite sure that a deterrent was needed for sound defence. The hon. Member

for Leeds West (Mr. Meadowcroft) looked distinctly uncomfortable at that moment. He probably always does. I should like to know whether the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) agree with their leader's remark that a deterrent is needed. If they are of that view, I hope that they will say that clearly at the next CND rally that they attend.
The right hon. Gentleman went on to state—this is a remarkable passage, for which we are indebted to him—his alternatives to the Trident system. He started by saying that he had talked to so many academics that he did not know which system was best or worst. He thought that he would list them all. He had heard them paddling their own canoes and their own solutions. He said that he was convinced that the parties in opposition should not, and could not, make decisions until they were in government and able to know the facts. That is great, but he has made a decision, apparently with all the ignorance of opposition—that is his own description of it—to abandon the Trident system.
If the right hon. Gentleman does not know which system to buy or which system is the right system, how does he know that the Trident system is not right? Why is there not, in his list of six items, a seventh item? Why is there not a Trident system in the list for the right hon. Gentleman to tell us that he does not know either whether it should be abandoned or adopted? This part of what he said simply fell apart, and the attitude of the House reflected that in every way. The right hon. Gentleman failed lamentably in his one opportunity to put across some idea to the country of what the Liberals' defence policy is. If it is possible, we were far less clear about what it is or is not than we were before he spoke this evening, and that surely is a pity.
There are three options before us: there is the motion tabled by the right hon. Gentleman, an amendment tabled by my right hon. Friends and myself, and also an amendment tabled by the Leader of the Opposition. "Death of a Salesman" was the right hon. Gentleman's comment on the fortunes of the Leader of the Opposition in America at the moment. The Leader of the Opposition has great competition from the right hon. Gentleman himself, if it comes to unrealistic speeches on defence. After tonight's speech, he is in the top league.
The Labour party's amendment is a sad one. This is the first time that we have had an officially backed Labour party advocating the abandonment of Britain's independent nuclear strategy. Mr. Attlee, Mr. Bevan and Mr. Gaitskell must be turning in their graves this evening.
If we move from that aspect of the right hon. Gentleman's amendment and examine the words written in it, we see that the Opposition have the courage to put into their amendment a condemnation of Her Majesty's Government for cutting expenditure on non-nuclear defence. That is rich, coming from the right hon. Gentleman, whose party's last budget for defence was about £8 billion. Today, the budget for defence is nearly £19 billion. The budget is running at 20 per cent. higher in real terms than when the Labour party left office. Opposition Members have the cheek to state in their amendment that Her Majesty's Government are cutting expenditure on non-nuclear defence. If that is an example of the veracity and correctness of the drafting in the Labour party's department for doing these things, it calls into question the remainder of what it writes.
I do not have time to list yet again the threat that we in the West face from the superiority of conventional forces that face us in Europe. It is all in the White Paper. It has been repeated many times, so I shall not repeat it tonight. Nor is there any shortage of examples of places where the Soviet Union has used its military power, or threatened to use it, to achieve political aims. We should have to be blind indeed to forget the lessons of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan and Poland. It would be the height of folly for any British Government to follow the advice which the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale gave and which the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition is giving across the Atlantic with such a lack of success at the moment. It would be the height of folly for any British Government to gamble on the uncertain intentions of the Soviet Union by abandoning the policies that have secured our peace for over forty years.
Successive British Governments—Conservative and Labour—have pursued these policies by means of the collective security offered by membership of NATO. NATO exists solely to prevent war. Its whole strategy is defensive. For that strategy to work NATO must have—and be seen to have—sufficient forces to convince any potential aggressor that he has more to lose than to gain by an act of aggression. NATO requires for this purpose a range of forces—conventional and nuclear—to enable it to respond appropriately at whatever level aggression occurs. Of course, we cannot achieve parity with the Russians in every form of weaponry, but we must have sufficient forces to convince an aggressor that it would be in his interests to cease his attack and withdraw. The Labour party now tries to suggest that conventional forces alone can offer a credible deterrent. Even if a Labour Government spent every penny of the money that is being devoted to the Trident programme to increase conventional defence, that would do virtually nothing to alter the conventional imbalance in Europe.

Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Would it not also require national service to resume in this country?

Mr. Younger: My hon. Friend may be right. I would not be at all surprised if that were so. At the very most—being most generous to it—such a move might buy one or two extra armoured divisions, comprising an extra 300 tanks. What difference would 300 extra tanks make when the Soviet Union already has about 30,000 more tanks in Europe than NATO has? The Labour party is offering an uncertain protection against conventional attack, but no protection whatever against nuclear blackmail.

Mr. Denzil Davies: Does the right hon. Gentleman believe that that gap, as he sees it, can be bridged, or does he believe that it is unbridgeable?

Mr. Younger: By purely conventional means, the gap is definitely unbridgeable. It is unbridgeable even if we dig a ditch and put slurry into it—or whatever it is that the Leader of the Opposition has been trying to suggest. The concept of doubling or trebling the amount of all our hardware in Europe to try to match the vast amount of conventional hardware that meets it at present would not only be extremely difficult to achieve, and possibly involve national service, as my hon. Friend suggested, but would

make life quite intolerable in those parts of western Europe where that hardware was supposed to be stationed.

Mr. Davies: In that case, why did the hon. Gentleman say to the IISS on 19 November that the gap was not unbridgeable in respect of the conventional gap?

Mr. Younger: The gap is bridged by the other means that NATO has to meet the threat. That is the point. That is not only what the right hon. Gentleman does not seem to understand, but it is the key factor in what the Leader of the Opposition patently does not understand and, as a result, is saying absurd things in America.
We yield to no one in our commitment to improve conventional defences. We have bought Tornado. We have bought new battle tanks and warships. We have bought new weapons, from small arms to artillery systems. We have made the pay of our forces fair and competitive. All these changes have made us safer, but, at the same time, we have faced the need to modernise our nuclear forces, recognising that nuclear weapons are absolutely central to NATO strategy. Britain's independent deterrent, which is committed to NATO, plays an important part in that strategy. It represents a second centre of nuclear decision-making within NATO. This complicates the ability of a potential aggressor to judge the likely response to any attack on NATO in Europe, and thereby reduces the chances of an attack.
Our deterrent is the ultimate guarantee of our security, but deterrence is a matter of perception. There can be no doubt about the commitment of the United States to the defence of Europe. The independent deterrent is our insurance policy against the risk of the Soviet Union miscalculating the strength of that commitment.
The Labour party would not just abandon our independent deterrent; it would forsake the protection of the United States nuclear shield as well. The right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock) has some excuse, I suppose, for advocating such a dangerously naive policy. He has never had to shoulder the responsibilities of Government office. But there is no such excuse for the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey). I shall not repeat the apt quotation of the words of the right hon. Member for Leeds, East made by the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale. It is a tragedy that the right hon. Member for Leeds, East does not stand up for what I think he still believes—the fact that NATO's nuclear strategy is an essential part of the balance that has kept the peace for more than 40 years. It is a pity that the right hon. Gentleman is no longer prepared to make such speeches.
The alarm felt in the United States at the Labour party's policies are not by any means confined to the present Administration. The right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale made a point on that. I shall quote the words of Mr. Stephen Solarz, a leading liberal Democratic Congressman, who said:
On this issue Mr. Weinberger speaks for most Americans. What Labour intends to do would bring the biggest crisis in the NATO Alliance since the Soviets built their wall in Berlin. The removal of our nuclear missiles would inevitably lead to the removal of all American troops from Britain. Our soldiers require the protection of the nuclear umbrella.
No wonder, with that background from a liberal Democrat, the Leader of the Opposition is having such a uniquely unsuccessful time in his efforts to sell this idea to the United States.
I hope the Labour party realises that, in effect, it is saying that if Britain were faced with the threat of aggression, a Labour Government would say to the Americans, "Stay out. We do not want the protection of your nuclear shield. We would prefer to surrender."
Not only does Britain need to retain its independent deterrent, but it needs to retain a deterrent that will work. If our capacity to deter is to remain unbroken well into the next century, we need to start modernising that deterrent now. I hope that the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale will note that point. We need to make this decision, not next week or next month, or in five or 10 years' time, but now. The right hon. Gentleman cannot put it off a day longer.
The life of our existing Polaris deterrent cannot be extended beyond the mid-1990s. By that time, Polaris will be 30 years old. The submarines will be nearing the end of their hull life, the ability of the boats to patrol undetected will be much less certain, and the ability of the missiles to penetrate strengthened anti-ballistic missile defences will be less assured than it is today. In 1980—not in 1986—this Government took the decision that Trident was the most cost-effective replacement for Polaris. It can be delivered in the time scale required and at a price we can afford. More important, it offers a deterrent with the minimum capacity necessary to remain effective in the face of improving Soviet capabilities.

Mr. James Wallace: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the answer to the question, "What is the missile system that is needed to penetrate the increasingly sophisticated defences of Moscow?" might well be, "Trident"? If asked a slightly different question, "What do we need to deter in terms of inflicting unacceptable damage on the Soviet Union?", there is a different answer, because a range of other systems, including Polaris, open up. Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that on 12 October 1986, on "This Week, Next Week", he said that we need
to have a larger number of warheads to be able to penetrate what will be very much more sophisticated defences. That is the whole reason why we need Trident. If we didn't have that we could carry on Polaris for a long time to come"?

Mr. Younger: I am mystified about the point that the hon. Gentleman is trying to make. What he says might carry some weight if we had some idea of his view on what we should do, but, as he has no idea, and as the leader of the Liberal party has made it clear that he has no idea and will not even try to get such an idea for years to come, the whole exercise of a defence policy in the Liberal party is a complete non-event from start to finish.
Over the life of the programme, Trident will take only 3 per cent. of the total defence budget, or 6 per cent. of the equipment budget. That is a smaller slice of the defence budget than some conventional programmes, such as Tornado. The Trident programme is well on course. It is six years since the decision was taken to purchase it. Nearly £3 billion of a total £10 billion has been spent or committed already. The first submarine keel has been laid.
Of course, there are those who suggest that this programme should be abandoned, and we heard something of that today. On that sort of logic, at this stage in the programme, in another context we should build half the Channel tunnel, then stop and start building a bridge

instead. Such people suggest that Trident represents a massive escalation of our nuclear capability. Only the other day I read that the office of the Leader of the Opposition had produced an information paper claiming that Trident represented an increase in our firepower of between eight and 14 times. If that is an information paper, I think that a "misinformation paper" would be a far more accurate description.
It is no secret, and never has been, that Trident will carry more warheads than Polaris—but far less than the theoretical maximum. This means that the increase at most would be about two and a half times—nothing like the eight or 14 times that has been bandied about. I point out that, since 1970, Soviet strategic warhead numbers have increased fivefold. Even if current proposals for 50 per cent. cuts in strategic arsenals are agreed and go through, the number of Soviet warheads will be three times as high as in 1970.
This enhanced capability is essential if Britain is to continue to have a credible deterrent well into the next century. The replacement for Polaris will have to operate in a quite different environment from the one in which Polaris operates today. We have to plan for the improvements which the Soviets are making to their own defences.
Let us not forget that they possess the only deployed anti-ballistic missile system in the world. If our deterrent is to work, it must have an increased capability to penetrate increased defences. If Polaris represents the minimum deterrent in today's world, Trident is the equivalent of that minimum deterrent in tomorrow's world.

Mr. Gerrard Neale: Does my right hon. Friend agree that Trident permits far greater deployment of the submarines to avoid detection than any of the schemes suggested by the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel)?

Mr. Younger: My hon. Friend is right. Indeed, I was going to touch briefly on that aspect in a moment. The alternatives of the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale were so incredible in all their aspects that we need not take them as seriously as that.
It would be perverse for any party to accept the need for Britain to have an independent deterrent and then to choose one that did not work, but that is exactly the compromise which the leader of the Liberal Party and his allies have come up with after months of wrangling—a policy to maintain a nuclear capability below the minimum required to provide an effective deterrent beyond the mid-1990s. I have explained why that is so. The latest flimsy attempt at a compromise—the so-called Liberal "defence initiative"—proposed the cancellation of Trident and the retention of a minimum nuclear capability with a capacity frozen at a level no greater than that of Polaris.
The Liberal party, as we have heard this evening, cannot even say what that capability will be. It does not know what system it will be, who will operate it, how big it will be or when it will be ready. In addition, the Liberal party wants a long time to think about it before it even decides any of these matters. It claims that a decision is not yet needed. That policy is nothing short of a policy for one-sided nuclear disarmament by the back door, and it is no wonder that the hon. Member for Leeds, West supports it and feels that he can live with it.

Mr. Steel: I have had a quick look at my 1981 speeches and find that there is no such quotation. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will get the Conservative central office to alter his briefing. Surely he accepts that if we go for a minimum deterrent capacity which does not seek to strike at Moscow we can have a level of safeguard on penetration and survivability and costs that are lower than those in the Trident programme. Let us admit that there is a difference of opinion between us, but let him not try to pretend that the system is unworkable. The right hon. Gentleman sets the ground rules, and if he wants to attack Moscow he must have Trident. We do not.

Mr. Younger: I have not mentioned attacking Moscow. We make no pretence about naming targets in our discussions on this. The problem is whether a missile system will get through the defences, never mind the target that is being attacked. It has to be realistic and credible, and the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion is not credible.
The Liberal party says that it has a number of alternatives, and in his speech the right hon. Gentleman listed some extraordinary ones. They are all a mirage. The right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) said that to use French ballistic missiles would not even be cheaper than Trident. He admitted that they would be much more expensive. I shall go further by saying that such a system could not possibly be developed in time to replace Polaris in the mid-1990s, when Polaris will be at the end of its useful life. To run Polaris beyond then is neither a realistic nor a safe option. A deterrent based on cruise missiles is also unrealistic.
The range of submarine-launched cruise missiles is shorter than Trident, the sea room in which the submarines will be forced to operate is more limited and the missiles take longer to fire. For all these reasons, cruise missiles would be more vulnerable and their ability to penetrate Soviet defences, whatever they were trying to hit, by the year 2000 could certainly not be assured. To overcome the problem would require more missiles at even greater cost, and even then it would be inconceivable that any effective cruise missile alternative could be developed and deployed in time to replace Polaris.
There are signs in the alliance of back-tracking even on this. The right hon. Member for Devonport is at last beginning to realise the truth of this awkwardness, too. What other explanation could there be for the recent shift in his position when reviewing the options for a British minimum deterrent in a BBC TV programme on 18 November? In that programme he spoke about
a very much reduced Trident missile, with reduced deployment—three submarines and less warheads".
That seems a most extraordinary volte-face by the right hon. Gentleman and completely conflicts with what his right hon. Friend said in this debate, which amounted to an outright rejection of Trident in any circumstances.
It seems unlikely that the Liberal party would endorse any option based on Trident, and to judge from what he said I am sure that the hon. Member for Leeds, West would not do so. The recent Liberal party conference at Eastbourne repeatedly voted in support of unilateralist views. Unless the alliance can make up its mind on an issue as important as the future of the British independent deterrent, it will have no right to be taken seriously.
Why are we having this debate? The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Liberal party uses precious time for this matter, but he has been exposed as an

emperor without clothes. In spite of that, he has come along today to flaunt his nakedness on this vital subject. His motion puts the Government in quite a difficulty. As far as it goes, I agree wholeheartedly with the right hon. Gentleman's motion, but as a motion on defence for Britain it is totally inadequate because it does not even mention any positive policy by the party which has tabled it. For that reason I ask my hon. Friends to vote against the motion and to add the sound and sensible policy outlined in our amendment.

Mr. Denzil Davies: This is not the only occasion on which we can debate the conventional balance or imbalance. It is a difficult subject and we shall have to come back to it on another occasion. Nobody denies that an imbalance exists, the question is how much and in what areas. The Secretary of State sought to give the impression that the gap was not bridgeable. He said that the only way it could be bridged—if that is the right word because one is in a different area—is by nuclear weapons.
As I understand it, that is not what the right hon. Gentleman said on 19 November when he spoke to the Institute of Strategic Studies. I have the report of that speech but I shall check it and come back to it. Quoting the right hon. Gentleman it says he said: "the gap is not unbridgeable". There is nothing there about bridging it with nuclear weapons. He also said:
we do maintain a technological superiority in a number of key areas".
He also said something else that I was glad to read. He said:
simple number crunching can be misleading".
That is what we have had from the Secretary of State and his predecessor in speech after speech on the Defence Estimates. They indulged in simple number crunching—how many tanks they have and how many we have. In his speech to the Institute of Strategic Studies he went on to say
"IISS figures are broadly similar to the MoD's
The IISS figures did not show an unbridgeable gap in conventional defence. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman should go back and check some of the things he has said in order to make sure that he is not saying one thing to a group of so-called experts and something else in this House.
The Secretary of State asked why we were having this debate. Having listened to the leader of the Liberal party it seems to be that the only reason is the right hon. Gentleman's desperate desire—although he was not very successful—to paper over the cracks in his party's defence policy and the policy of what is apparently described as the alliance. I am sorry to say that he did not make a serious contribution to these fundamental and difficult issues.
The right hon. Gentleman hardly addressed himself to the motion. The motion says nothing about Britain's independent nuclear deterrent. [Interruption.] The amendment was not tabled by the right hon. Gentleman. We are debating the motion and I shall try to stick more closely to it than did the right hon. Gentleman. Perhaps I shall get into trouble in this difficult area, but in these matters I am a masochist and I am quite happy to carry on.
The right hon. Gentleman got himself into terrible difficulties when he tried to pretend that somehow there


was some alternative to Trident. We agree with the Government about Trident and believe that decisions have to be taken, if not now, pretty soon, and as far as we can see Trident is the only option if one wants to go down the road of acquiring a third generation of British nuclear weaponry. We do not think that it is necessary to go down that road, and believe for all sorts of reasons that it is foolish. We have debated that in the House before and will be quite happy to debate it again. At least the Labour party has a clear view on that and so has the Government, but the Liberal leadership and the Social Democratic party are still wallowing in a hopeless and hypocritical fudge.
The motion is quite extraordinary. The leader of the Liberal party mentioned Reykjavik. I shall come back to that. He also spoke about disarmament and the need to cut strategic weapons. However, the motion says nothing about that.
Coming from the Liberal party, the motion is quite extraordinary. Conservative Members may agree with the motion, although I understand that the Secretary of State intends to vote against it. The confusion deepens in that respect. However, the motion gives complete and unquestioning support to the NATO strategy of what is described by its advocates as the "flexible response" and by its detractors as the "strategy of first use of nuclear weapons". The choice of phrase depends upon one's position in the argument. However, the motion gives total and uncritical support to the policy of first use.
The motion appears to me to have a whiff of arrogance and absolutism. We may have heard the voice of the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel) in the Chamber today, but I detect the hand of Esau in the motion. I certainly would not have expected this kind of motion to be tabled by the leader of the Liberal party.
There is overwhelming support for the first half-sentence of the alliance motion, which reads:
That this House reaffirms its support for Britain's continued membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation".
At conference after conference, the Labour party has by massive majorities fully supported our membership of NATO. We have repeatedly made it clear—and I do so again now—that under the next Labour Government, 95 per cent.—as under this Government—of defence expenditure will be committed to NATO in terms of men and equipment.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Look what happened to New Zealand.

Mr. Davies: If the hon. Lady wishes to intervene, I suggest that she rises.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: I am delighted to do that. I did not think that the right hon. Gentleman would give way.
An American Senator made it clear at the weekend that if American nuclear weapons were chucked out of Britain—weapons which defend American troops in this country—there is no way in which the Americans would allow us to remain in NATO.

Mr. Davies: The hon. Lady's intervention was very interesting. She said
There is no way in which the Americans would allow us to remain in NATO.

Is she suggesting that they would not let this country—which contributes £18 billion or £19 billion, which has 55,000 troops on the Rhine, with its Air Force on the central front, with its frigates, destroyers and submarines in the eastern Atlantic—remain in NATO? I am sorry that I gave way to the hon. Lady if that is the kind of point that she wants to make. No country can do more, and we will make a contribution of 95 per cent. of our defence expenditure to NATO.

Mr. Jonathan Sayeed: That is 95 per cent. of damn all.

Mr. Davies: I must say that 95 per cent. or £19 billion is quite a lot. The hon. Gentleman is being very insulting to the British troops in Germany.

Mr. Sayeed: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Davies: Not yet. He is very insulting to the British Forces in Germany who are there to defend and work within NATO and who may have to give their lives. It is extremely insulting for the hon. Gentleman to say that that is "damn all".

Mr. Sayeed: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Davies: No, I will not give way.

Mr. Roland Boyes: We do not have time to give way to people like the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Davies: We will cancel Trident. As we have said before, we will use the money saved by the cancellation of Trident for non-nuclear defence, and in that way we shall strengthen the conventional balance—about which the Secretary of State is concerned—and especially in central Europe.

Mr. Sayeed: Give way.

Mr. Davies: There is no time for me to give way.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: The right hon. Gentleman attacked my hon. Friend and he should give way.

Mr. Davies: The hon. Gentleman attacked me first.

Mr. Sayeed: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way very briefly?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. It is very clear to me that the right hon. Gentleman is not giving way.

Mr. Davies: We cannot support the remainder of the Liberal party motion and, it seems, neither can the Government. It gives almost total and uncritical support to the strategy of first use of nuclear weapons. Under that strategy, in the first few days of a conventional war NATO could well, and probably would, seek to fight a nuclear war in central Europe. That strategy would destroy the very territory that we would be seeking to defend and it would annihilate friend and foe alike.

Mr. Sayeed: Can the right hon. Gentleman confirm whether the Labour party intends to maintain defence spending—if it ever forms a Government—at the current rate in real terms?

Mr. Davies: Yes.

Mr. Wallace: I understand that it is Labour party policy to bring defence spending as a percentage of the gross national product in line with that of other European nations. Will he tell us the timescale involved as that would imply a reduction in defence spending?

Mr. Davies: That is not possible, and would not be possible within the lifetime of the first Labour Government. Our priority is to get rid of nuclear weapons. The corollary to that priority must be to spend on conventional forces the money saved by getting rid of nuclear weapons, thereby improving the conventional balance about which the Secretary of State is so concerned.

Mr. Keith Best: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Will he set out precisely what that money will be spent upon as an enhancement of conventional forces?

Mr. Davies: Indeed, if the hon. Gentleman wishes me to prolong my speech I shall do that. There are areas within the Royal Navy where money could be spent. The Secretary of State will not be able to maintain even 50 frigates and destroyers. Some of the money will be spent on that. So far, the Secretary of State has put no money into the budget for the European fighter aircraft. We are committed to the European fighter aircraft. Much could also be done in the Army—[Interruption.] I know that Conservative Members do not like this, and that it is difficult for them to accept. However, I will continue to repeat in the House and in the media that the next Labour Government will maintain defence spending at present levels in real terms taking account of inflation—or whatever the phrase is—and that money will be spent on conventional forces.
As I have said clearly, we are opposed to the strategy of first use of nuclear weapons. There is a strong implication in the motion that we cannot remain in NATO with our present policy. The motion implies that, apparently, the independent sovereign and democratic states that constitute the NATO Alliance have no rights to challenge any real aspect of NATO strategy, however foolish that might appear and despite the fact that their electorates have voted for such a challenge. That is not the NATO that most of the NATO states themselves recognise or desire.
NATO is not a monolithic grouping. It is not a tight federation in which states have a veto on the policies of other members and nations. It is not the Warsaw pact—although, from the speeches of some Conservative Members, it might appear to be the Warsaw pact. It is not. It is a collection of individual nation states that make a contribution to the defence of democracy and of the West.

Mr. Steel: Does the right hon. Gentleman seriously believe that other European members of NATO would be willing to maintain their share of the nuclear umbrella while allowing a British Government under his auspices to pull out of the responsibility?

Mr. Davies: I am intrigued at the idea of a "share of the nuclear umbrella" but I will come back to that. I shall not evade the right hon. Gentleman's question, although the nuclear umbrella was not mentioned in his motion or in his speech.
NATO is not the Warsaw pact. It is made up of independent sovereign states. The worst thing that could happen and which could lead to the break-up of NATO would be if the democratic peoples of the nation states of western Europe and the United States were not allowed to change or argue for change in NATO policy. Such fetters on democratic action would endanger NATO far more than any challenge to parts of its policy.
In January 1986 the Secretary-General of NATO, Lord Carrington, said that in NATO
anything is possible; there are no hard and fast rules".
I think that he went too far there. He was too lax about it. I should not go so far as to say that anything goes in NATO and that there are no rules at all. Of course there are rules. The rules are that each member country makes a substantial contribution, according to its resources, to the collective defence of western Europe. That is the NATO that most member states recognise.
The rigidity of NATO implied in the motion does not accord with the actions of individual states in the past. Almost half the members of NATO will not have American nuclear weapons on their soil, but they are still members of NATO and still make their contributions according to their lights.
So far as I can see, the British Government take little account of the views of NATO in their defence cuts. I do not criticise the Secretary of State for his absence, as he told me why he had to leave, but it is extraordinary to pretend that there have been no cuts in defence expenditure. One has only to look at the public expenditure review for the next three years to know that. I do not recollect the Government seeking NATO approval for their cuts in defence expenditure. Sir John Nott, whose 1981 defence review would have decimated the surface fleet, paid little regard to our NATO commitments in the eastern Atlantic. He did not tell the House that he could not reduce the surface fleet because NATO would not allow it. He simply went ahead. He may have mumbled a few words about consultation, although I am not even sure about that.
As for the United States, when President Reagan made his famous star wars strategic defence initiative speech in 1983 he declared that nuclear weapons were immoral and should be made obsolete. In the first sentence of that speech he unilaterally turned on its head 40 years of NATO nuclear strategy. I do not recollect any consultation before that speech was made, and I do not criticise President Reagan on that account. I do not recall the Ministry of Defence having a forward draft of the speech. The President simply exercised his right as the head of a sovereign state to make that speech. If the Conservatives think that is all over now, they should realise that the consequences of that momentous unilateral action are only just becoming apparent. No British Prime Minister, Labour or Tory, no previous American President and perhaps even no general secretary of the Soviet Communist party had ever made such a statement, but the President of the United States unilaterally turned NATO strategy on its head.
President Reagan did the same thing at Reykjavik to such an extent that General Rogers rushed off to the Pentagon and General Metz, the German deputy supreme commander of NATO, almost had apoplexy, saying that Reagan had destroyed the whole of NATO strategy. I do not recall there being much consultation before that action, but again it was taken by a member of NATO. Perhaps Lord Carrington is right that there are no real rules.
The motion goes on to make the extraordinary claim that the abandonment of British nuclear missiles is incompatible with NATO membership.

Mr. Cecil Franks: I apologise for missing the beginning of the right hon. Gentleman's


speech. He has referred to the Americans and others saying that nuclear weapons were immoral. I remind him that his own party regards nuclear energy as dangerous and is committed to phasing it out. I have asked him this several times before but have not received an answer. What would a Labour Government do about hunter-killer submarines, which are powered by nuclear energy? How does the right hon. Gentleman square his party's commitment to phasing out nuclear energy with the continuation of submarines which are, in effect, floating nuclear power stations?

Mr. Davies: The hon. Gentleman asks what we would do about hunter-killer submarines. My answer is that we shall build more of them, and we shall build them at Barrow.

Mr. Franks: How does the right hon. Gentleman square that with closing Sellafield?

Mr. Davies: The hon. Gentleman has had the answer before. If he reads his local newspapers and listens to his local radio station he will hear the answer time and again.
The motion implies that abandoning Britain's nuclear rockets, missiles, deterrent or whatever is incompatible with NATO membership.

Mr. Steel: The right hon. Gentleman is not reading it properly.

Mr. Davies: Let us see exactly what it says, as the right hon. Gentleman never touched on this although he spoke for 20 minutes. The motion states:
That this House…believes that membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the security of Britain are incompatible with a policy which combines"—
whatever that means—
the unilateral abandonment of Britain's nuclear deterrent".
The implication is that if we did not abandon Britain's nuclear deterrent everything would be all right, but I will leave that point and move on.
Let us consider the next part of the motion, to which I gather the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale subscribes, which suggests that it is incompatible with membership of NATO to expel from Britain the United States nuclear contribution——

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Expulsion.

Mr. Davies: I shall consider that word in a moment, but I wish to dwell on the word "incompatible".
I notice that the Government amendment—of course the Government draft these things a little more carefully than the Opposition—does not use the word incompatible. It is not as extreme, rigid or inflexible as the motion tabled by the leader of the Liberal party. It contains some rather vague phrases about gloom, doom and so on.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: There is nothing vague about it.

Mr. Davies: I ask you for your protection, Mr. Speaker.
The Government's motion talks about cohesion and jeopardising in a rather vague way. The Government do not dare to say that not having nuclear weapons on the soil of a nation state is incompatible with membership of NATO, as they know that is not the case. The moment the Government say that it is incompatible with membership of NATO, that signifies that somewhere there are rules

laid down, and presumably they have been broken by seven NATO countries including Norway and Denmark. The Government do not dare to use the word "incompatible" because they are concerned about the other countries of NATO. They, at least, have some regard for reality because they will not say—I challenge the Minister to do so—whether it is incompatible—I use that word because it is a clear word—with membership of NATO. Of course it is not, and the Government know that.
Let us consider the American nuclear contribution in Britain. We have Poseidon submarines at Holy loch, cruise missiles at Greenham common and hydrogen or nuclear bombs at Lakenheath and Upper Heyford. Our contention is that their removal from Britain would not militarily damage NATO in any way. Even the United States navy admits that Poseidon submarines at Holy loch are of rapidly diminishing importance. That navy is now in the process of being equipped with the newer Trident C4 system which, according to congressional statements can cover the potential targets on departure from their base in Kings Bay, Georgia without the need for a lengthy transit.
The cruise missiles at Greenham common should never have come here in the first place. They certainly were not placed here for military reasons. No sensible military man would put nuclear missiles on land in such a small and somewhat cramped island like Britain. Richard Perle put it clearly in the Boston Globe of 2 June 1983:
cruise missiles never had much military utility because they are so vulnerable to attack.
In the same year, in an interview with Newsweek, Robert MacNamara said:
There is no military requirement for NATO to deploy Pershing II and cruise missiles to maintain a stable deterrent.
Cruise missiles are at Greenham common mainly because Chancellor Schmidt, egged on by Henry Kissinger, started to have grave doubts about the American nuclear umbrella, but I gather that Dr. Kissinger does not think much about that umbrella these days.
Chancellor Schmidt thought that the rather shattered concept of a nuclear umbrella could be patched up by apparently scattering nuclear missiles all around Europe. If those missiles are in Europe, so the argument goes, an American President is more likely, or more certain, to risk the nuclear destruction of Washington in the defence of Hamburg, London or any other European city.
The presence of missiles in Britain does nothing to remove or diminish the dilemma that such a President would face. An American President, whose first duty, quite properly, is to his people, would properly make such a decision, at that time, in the interests of the American people—the people he represents.

Mr. Franks: rose——

Mr. Davies: No, I must get on. [HON. MEMBERS: "Give way."] I would be happy to give way, but others wish to speak so I must get on.
The F111 aircraft are described in the jargon of this business as being dual capable. Some are held back to drop nuclear bombs on the battlefields after the first few days of a war in Europe. It does not make any sense to drop hydrogen bombs all around the battlefields. It will not do much good for that part of Europe that we are trying to defend. It will not do much good for the 55,000 British


troops stationed on the Rhine or the 200,000 American troops in Germany. It does not make any sense and it is not a credible military policy.
At one time flexible response may have made total sense. It might have made sense when the United States had a nuclear monopoly or indeed a massive nuclear superiority. It might have made sense in 1964 when the Soviet Union had 65 nuclear warheads and when, according to Kissinger, the United States had about 1,000. But it makes no sense at all today when the United States has 11,000 nuclear warheads and the Soviet Union about the same.
What I find depressing about the debate, the Liberal motion and the Government's amendment is the fact there is no recognition at all of the changes that have taken place in Europe over the last 30 years. There is no real recognition of Chernobyl—Chernobyl might not have happened and Reykjavik might not have taken place. Ironically, the real debate on these matters is, surprisingly enough, taking place within the Republican Administration of the United States and between the Republican Administration and what I call the Henry Jackson tendency within the Democratic party.
I crave the indulgence of the House merely to quote from a interview that George Shultz, the Secretary of State, gave to Frank Lehrer on American television on 17 October following the Reykjavik meeting. George Shultz said:
But I think it would be a better world from our point of view if we didn't have these offensive ballistic missiles. And apparently the Soviets think so from their point of view too.
Lehrer: What about Senator Nunn's concern, however"——
I remind the House that as well as being a member of the Henry Jackson tendency Senator Nunn is also the Senator for Kings Bay Georgia——
that it would make for a less stable world
to get rid of these ballistic missiles.
It would make for a less stable world. It would make our defense more vulnerable than they are now.
Shultz: What's so good about a world where you can be wiped out in 30 minutes? If ever anything starts, 30 minutes later it's over with these awesome ballistic misssiles, and there's nothing left of them"——
that is, the Russians——
and there's nothing left of us. I don't see what's so good about that".
He went on:
If you say, 'why, then, is the Soviet Union interested?' The Soviet Union has shown over many wars that they're heroic in defending their homeland. How they'll do invading somebody else is another question, but they're heroic in defending their homeland. And so they also must be concerned about the ballistic missiles that we have that can wipe that homeland out. So that's basically the essence of it.

Mr. Patrick Thompson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sure you are aware that the opening speeches from the Front Benches have now taken one hour 20 minutes, leaving 54 minutes for the replies and Back Benchers. I hope that you will give your mind to that.

Mr. Speaker: I have given my mind to it, but I have no authority to stop it.

Mr. Davies: I should point out that two speeches were made by the Conservative Front Bench and the Leader of the Liberal party which were highly critical of the policies of the Opposition. I think I am entitled to take slightly longer. Incidentally, there were also a number of

interventions. I was chided for not giving way, although I was happy to do so. I apologise to the House, but I shall now bring my remarks to a close.
All I can say is that the debate goes on. It does not go on in the Liberal motion. The Government are burying their head in the sand and, sadly, it seems that the Liberal party is doing so as well.

Mr. Julian Critchley: A lifetime on the Back Benches has at least enabled me to keep my speeches short. In The Standard yesterday there was a MORI poll on the position of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties. Why was that? It surely cannot be anything that we have done. Playing away in Australia is no way to win a victory, but we owe our new-found success to the defence policies of the Labour and Liberal parties. We owe it to the so-called non-nuclear defence policy of the Labour party. That non-nuclear defence policy has put a cap on the votes that the Labour party will win at the next election. I have a cheerful feeling that history is about to repeat itself. We should not forget the Liberal party. The battle at Eastbourne, otherwise described as the lightweight championship of the world, at which I was present, has done marvels for the support of the Conservative party all over the country.
What would be the effect of Labour's non-nuclear policy on the United States? To put it in a nutshell, it would add hugely to what has already become an inglorious state of confusion. NATO is a nuclear Alliance or it is nothing. For as long as our adversaries have nuclear weapons, so should NATO. We can argue whether the British should have weapons, but we are unable to assert that NATO should become a non-nuclear Alliance in a nuclear world.
Surely the almost unanimous view in Washington is that if a major nuclear power such as Britain were ever to give the United States notice to quit, we would run a serious risk of starting the process of unravelling NATO. We must ask whether that would matter. Everyone, save the Labour party, thinks that it would. Russia fears not just Western or western European arms alone, but our ideas and prosperity. An unarmed Europe would be a political threat to the Soviet Union and would be an acute political threat to its control over eastern Europe, but an armed and independent Europe would pose an even greater threat than an unarmed Europe. The Alliance must remain essential for East-West stability.
On British nuclear weapons, Labour has surrendered to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament while at the same time remaining committed to our membership of NATO. But the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament remains hostile to our membership of NATO. Therefore, should we not ask when the process of the Labour party being subsumed within the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament will end? For as long as the Warsaw pact has nuclear weapons, a NATO without nuclear weapons would be a sham. It is no good advocating a defence policy in central Europe which is based on no first use—certainly not if we are to postulate that the Soviet Union is the aggressor, that we are the weaker of the two sides and that we would face defeat in a war fought with conventional weapons.
No first use is fool's gold. All that one can aspire to—conceivably by spending more money on British conventional forces in Europe—is no early first use. That is the practical side of the dilemma. Where is the


morality in Britain hitching a ride on the back of United States nuclear power? Where is the common sense in expelling from our country the nuclear forces of our major ally? Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Before I call the next speaker, I must say that the Front Bench speeches will begin at 9.40 pm. I appeal for short contributions because many hon. Members wish to take part in the debate.

Mr. D. E. Thomas: What is already apparent from the debate is the confusion on defence policy in the majority of the parties whose members have spoken in the debate thus far. The confusion on the Tory Benches was not as clear tonight as it has been in previous debates on defence, but there is a clear contradiction between the continuing residual commitment of large sections of the Conservative party to the notion of deterrence, and the removal of that option according to the latest thinking on United States policy. It does not make sense for the Tory party to continue to endorse deterrence, which relies upon mutual destruction, while its senior ally apparently regards that as immoral. The Prime Minister's approach in seeking to save Trident after the Reykjavik summit shows that the Government are determined to hang on to a deterrent which is no longer regarded as credible or moral.
We have also heard from the Conservative party, although not tonight, that we should support the strategic defence initiative research project and that there should be an SDI shield for Europe. However, expert scientific opinion on both sides of the Atlantic seems to believe that that is completely impossible.
Although the Government reiterate in their amendment to the alliance motion their broad defence approach, it contains a series of fundamental contradictions. There are also contradictions in the alliance defence policy, although we heard little about such a policy this evening. The right hon. Member for Llannelli (Mr. Davies) stressed that point. We did not hear much about the minimum European deterrent that has been canvassed, what delivery systems that would have and how it would operate. That is right, because the system could hardly be called a contribution to disarmament. It would contribute to an escalation in nuclear weapons in Europe——

Mr. Simon Hughes: It is not a policy.

Mr. Thomas: I am told from a sedentary position that it is not a policy. We were not told clearly tonight what the policy is. If that is not the policy, what is? I was under the impression, from following the internal debates and reading the joint commission document, that this might be the policy. Now we are told that it is not. It is clear that such a policy would lead to conflict between the more nuclearised states in Western Europe—France, Britain and, presumably, West Germany—and the rest of Europe.
We should approach defence policy so that the next generation in Britain and in Europe sees the non-nuclear contribution that Britain can make to de-escalating the

arms race in Europe. It is important to stress that the non-nuclear defence option that is contained in the CND programme—the Labour party officially supports that programme—is a scaling down of Britain's defence posture. After all, a non-nuclear capability can mean many things. It starts with the decommissioning of Britain's nuclear weapons and it is followed by a requirement for the removal of some nuclear bases from British territory, although not necessarily—as in the Labour party's policy—of the intelligence and control capability. It also extends to an attempt to de-nuclearise NATO strategy in Europe by moving away from the first-use strategy and the reliance by NATO in Europe on nuclear weapons.
Finally, the approach should lead to questioning the notion of the United States nuclear guarantee as security for Europe. That is what we mean by moving towards non-nuclear defence. The long-term goal must be the construction of a European security system that is determined not by the super-powers but by Europeans themselves. That is what might have been agreed at Reykjavik.

Mr. Bowen Wells: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Thomas: I shall not give way because of the time factor and because of Mr. Speaker's request.

Mr. Bowen Wells: Mr. Speaker is not the arbiter of whether an hon. Member should give way.

Mr. Thomas: I shall not give way. I am coming to a rapid conclusion, and I do not wish to interfere with my delivery system.
The emphasis after Reykjavik should be an understanding among Europeans that if it is legitimate for intermediate nuclear forces talks between the superpowers to propose the removal of nuclear weapons in Europe, it is high time that Europeans took part in such discussions. That is the lesson that we must learn from Reykjavik.

Mr. Keith Best: This debate is about deterrence and disarmament, or should be. Three arguments are popularly advanced against the possession of Trident.
First, it is argued that Trident would represent an increase in the level of nuclear forces, so would be likely to be in breach of the non-proliferation treaty. I must say to the right hon. Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) that while it is true that Trident will enhance the capability compared with Polaris, that is inevitable, given that we must provide an effective deterrent well into the next century to face improved Soviet anti-missile defences. It has been made clear that the Government do not intend to use the full capability of the system. Indeed, when it enters service in the 1990s, Trident will represent only the same small proportion of Soviet strategic forces, even if they are reduced along the lines of the United States START proposals, as did Polaris when it entered service in 1970. United Kingdom strategic forces will continue to be of a minimum size compatible with ensuring a cost-effective deterrent at all times.
The second argument is that we should not have nuclear weapons because other NATO countries do not. The most persuasive argument in favour of nuclear weapons in Europe is that that provides a second centre


of decision-making. If we are not to be that second centre, where is it to be? Is it seriously suggested that it should rest alone with France—a country which does not commit its military forces, other than its navy, to NATO exercises? It is suggested that there might be a joint agreement with France, but surely that is wholly impractical and undesirable.
The third reason is the cost of Trident. Yet it is now well understood that it will cost less than the Tornado aircraft system. It is the cheapest form of deterrent available.
The right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel) told us that politicians in opposition should not take this decision, so he has disfranchised himself from making any decisions. I can understand that when he iterates the various options and cannot determine which should be preferred. He spoke of extending the life of Polaris. Presumably when his car is falling to pieces on his drive, he merely pretends that its life will be extended and that he will not have to replace it. He suggested putting cruise missiles into aircraft without contemplating the disadvantages of range and vulnerability. He also suggested that cruise missiles could be put into SSNs, without contemplating the reduction in their effectiveness in their primary role.
The right hon. Member for Llanelli argued his case for the Labour party, but his party is destined to make the same mistake as it did in 1983, because it has yet to understand that some of its staunchest supporters believe in the defence of the realm and will not be persuaded by a party which leaves the country completely defenceless.
The United States Congress is in advance of this House on the support for a comprehensive test ban treaty. We are closer to the mechanics of a proper nuclear weapons control agreement than we have been for a long time. Neither side will trust the other on an arms deal, unless such an agreement is capable of adequate verification. Therein lies the key.
The Government's commitment to a comprehensive test ban treaty is often overlooked by the so-called peace lobby. As early as 27 March 1982, in a speech at Harrogate, the Prime Minister stated:
We want a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty…it remains this Government's objective.
That commitment to a verifiable comprehensive test ban treaty has been reiterated by Ministers subsequently.
Together with the United States and the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom participated fully from 1977 to 1980 in trilateral negotiations on a comprehensive test ban treaty. The United Kingdom has played a full and active part in multilateral discussions at the Geneva conference on disarmament, where a nuclear test ban working group was established in 1982. In a debate on 7 June 1985 my right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Luce) than a Minister in the Foreign Office, pointed out:
we are not looking for perfect or 100 per cent. verification."—[Official Report, 7 June 1985; Vol. 80, c. 617.]
As a signatory of the non-proliferation treaty, we are required to show that we are using our best endeavours to make progress towards nuclear disarmament. The final declaration of the third review conference of the NPT held in Geneva from August to September 1985 called upon the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom to reconvene their trilateral negotiations on a comprehensive test ban treaty by the end of 1985. We all know that that has not yet happened. Although our commitment to

a comprehensive test ban treaty is not unique, we have a particular role to play in acting as a catalyst and in seeking to remove obstacles.
The British Government have submitted a paper to the conference on disarmament entitled "Seismic Monitoring for a Comprehensive Test Ban", which is a full and technical document dealing with the matter, and acknowledges that seismic monitoring offers the only practical long-range means of ensuring compliance with a treaty banning underground nuclear weapon test explosions.
The United Kingdom's paper argues that a negotiated ban on underground nuclear testing would demand setting up a global seismic network for monitoring at teleseismic ranges. It concludes that such a network would serve to detect and identify all normal underground test explosions with yields greater than the 1 kiloton. However, it is believed that with the development of the high frequency seismometer, explosions as small as one tenth of a kiloton can be identified.
In 1984, a group of six world leaders came together in New Delhi and issued a joint statement of their intention to become a third party in arms negotiations between the super-powers, known as the five continents peace initiative. That initiative has been promoted by Parliamentarians Global Action, an international body of some 600 Members of Parliament from 36 different countries, to which many British Members of Parliament belong.
From October 1985, the six had continuing correspondence with President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev on the issues of a testing moratorium and verification of arms control agreements. In November 1985, at the Geneva summit, one major obstacle to the advance of verification measures was removed by the Soviet Union reaffirming that it was prepared to have internal seismographic stations installed on its own territory. That was a major shift from earlier policy in the 1960s, when it was the Americans who wanted on-site verification and the Soviets who claimed that it would be an unwarranted intrusion into their sovereignty.
In the summer of 1985, Parliamentarians Global Action commissioned a scientific study on verification of a time-limited testing moratorium, the first study of its kind, which was written by three top American seismologists. The conclusions of that study encouraged the group of six to make a series of verification proposals to the United States and the USSR. In April 1986, officers of Parliamentarians Global Action met Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze and other high-level officials to discuss verification of a test ban.
Shevardnadze said that his country would permit seismic devices provided by the six leaders around the Soviet test sites, and after meeting members of the National Academy of Sciences it was decided that a group of American and Soviet scientists would be brought together in Moscow to examine in detail the possibilities of third party verification measures. At the conclusion of the meetings, an agreement was signed between the Soviet Academy and the New York-based Natural Resource Defence Council to launch a joint study of seismic events around the test site near Semipalatinsk.
The agreement also stated that Soviet experts were willing to participate in similar projects in the USA around the Nevada test site. A team of United States and Soviet technicians was created, and in July they placed their


instruments in the ground near the Soviet test site. It was the first time that American scientists had operated a verification system inside the USSR, and last month those Soviet scientists were in the United States deciding where the corresponding American test site would be.
On 6 August 1986, the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the group of six issued detailed technical proposals to Reagan and Gorbachev in which it offered to monitor a full nuclear testing moratorium covering all test sites. The six nations are prepared to finance all the costs of that verification plan. This was the first time in history that a third party had offered finance and personnel to verify a testing moratorium. In the United States Senate, a vote which was designed to coincide with this initiative was passed by 64 votes to 35 on a resolution calling upon President Reagan to resume negotiations towards concluding a verifiable comprehensive test ban treaty. In a most significant open letter to the group of six, Chancellor Kohl of West Germany, said that he had
followed with great interest the initiative of the Six Heads of State or Government. My Government is committed, just as the Six expressed their commitment in the Delhi Declaration, to a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban at the earliest juncture.
That was the first open message of support from the head of an important NATO country. I yet hope that this country will also support the proposals.
Of course there are difficulties still with verification, and there is not yet enough confidence in the capabilities of seismological monitoring to ensure that such verification will be accepted without demur by all countries. Nevertheless, a major advance has been made. If a complete ban on nuclear explosions were ever agreed between the United States and the Soviet Union, any system of verification would need to provide assurance that neither side were cheating. I do not underestimate the problems associated with adequate verification, but these are capable of solution soon, if not now.
The United Kingdom is committed to a comprehensive test ban treaty. This in itself will not give greater global security because the potential use of nuclear weapons is not inhibited by banning testing. We still need to find a system of international arbitrament of disputes which is universally acceptable and removes the need for possession of weapons of mass destruction. Only then will there be the capacity for prolonged peace but, as is acknowledged by the British Government, a comprehensive test ban treaty is an important step forward, and they are pursuing that objective. It is within our reach if we are prepared to stretch and grasp it.

Mr. Michael Meadowcroft: This is a crucial subject, and, as all parties will be facing a general election at some time, it is important that their policies are set out as clearly as possible. All loyal party Members have to accept their party policies, no matter what their individual policies might be, and continue to argue for those party policies. This goes for Conservative Members as well. No doubt the hon. Members for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Mr. Merchant) and for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) who put down an early-day motion in 1984 calling for a review of the Trident

programme, have not changed their position, just as the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) has not changed his position.
The discussions and negotiations that have led to the alliance policy have resulted in an approach that is central to the defence of our country and compares well with the belligerence shown by Conservative Members and the isolationism shown by Labour Members. It does nothing for the defence of the country to have a Labour party policy that concentrates more power in the hands of the Americans, from whom the Labour party professes to distance itself. It is not in the interests of this country to pursue the belligerent increase in nuclear fire power represented by the Trident programme.

Mr. Roger Gale: rose——

Mr. Meadowcroft: I am under instructions to sit down at 9.40 pm and I can do that only if I do not give way, much as I should like to do so.
In all these discussions we have to back our judgment as to where we shall be in government, and this is as true of the alliance policy as of any other. Our policy has three factors which I am prepared to support. They are that we shall freeze the current capability and negotiate down from that. That is fundamental to our policy and is a worthwhile aim which the public will support. Secondly, it requires no decision about the modernisation of any deterrent until the mid to late 1990s. There is no reason why it is not possible to go into government and look carefully at that within he lifetime of that Government. Thirdly, it sets out a moratorium on the deployment of intermediate nuclear weapons, and that means no cruise or Pershing at Molesworth.
We must all make judgments about what will happen in defence. At our party conferences, who could have imagined what would happen at Reykjavik and what would be put on the table there? I hope the Government will accept that the existence of SDI means nothing in relation to the intermediate nuclear forces and that they will go back to the negotiating table to use every possible influence on the Geneva talks so that the zero option for Europe is pursued with the utmost vigour.

Mr. Gale: rose——

Mr. Meadowcroft: It is not possible for me to give way.
I hope the Government accept that, if the Reagan Administration continue with the research on, and deployment of, SDI, that will change the whole concept of deterrence. The alliance accepts that we cannot continue with SDI and deterrence, because the former destabilises the latter. Following the speech that he made to the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies on 14 March 1985, I do not believe for a moment that the Foreign Secretary has moved at all on the trenchant criticisms that he made of SDI. Nevertheless, the Conservative party and the Government continue to support the Americans in their policy to deploy SDI. I believe that it will be possible when we come into Government in the next Parliament to perceive that the existence and continuance of SDI has an effect across the spectrum of defence spending and defence policies.
I am anxious to ascertain whether it is possible to find a way between the belligerence that comes from those on the Tory Benches and the isolationism that comes from those on the Labour Opposition Benches. I believe that it


is possible to produce a policy which will be way ahead of those two approaches and which will be acceptable to our parties.

Mr. Gale: The hon. Gentleman has referred to his party's policy and its endorsement of it. Will he confirm that the policy in the motion is endorsed by, for example, the alliance candidate for north or south Thanet, the candidate for Newcastle-under-Lyme, who is a member of CND, and the Liberal candidate for Hereford, who at Eastbourne voted for unilateral disarmament?

Mr. Meadowcroft: The answer is yes. It is endorsed as the policy of the alliance on which it will fight the next general election. Members on both sides of the House contribute to the formulation of their parties' policies. Having done so, they draw a line before the next election and say, "We shall fight the election on this policy."
It is crucial that politicians address themselves to the effect that their defence policy has on the overall defence policy and the nation's defence commitment. I am concerned that it is understood that, whether we unilaterally escalate our firepower or nuclear capability, or unilaterally abandon it, we shall have some effect on what happens throughout the continent and across the Atlantic. If we believe that we can act in isolation, we shall do a disservice to the electorate and the security and safety of the nation.
Foremost in our thinking must be a recognition of the need to seek to achieve a European initiative and European unity that will allow us to move away from the idea that the only way in which we can defend ourselves is by being part of a nuclear alliance which depends permanently on increasing firepower and by ratcheting up the different systems and methods of delivery. As long as we are faced with that attitude on the one side, and by a policy of abandonment on the other—"Let us abandon it and wash our hands of the whole business"—we shall never come to the view that our future lies in Europe rather than across the Atlantic.
The initiative upon which the alliance has determined it will fight the next election is one which is popular with the electorate and which can be sustained. If Conservative Members choose to listen to the siren voices which suggest that security lies only in strength, they will delude themselves. If Labour Members believe the siren voices which tell them that we can abandon everything and still remain secure, they are foolish. I support the initiative that we have taken and I hope that it will be supported when the Division takes place.

Mr. Gerry Neale: The motion highlights the problem of the Liberal party in this place and in the country. The Liberal party comprises those who have sincere and deeply held views on nuclear defence, but they are diametrically opposed views. The unilateralists among the Liberals will be appalled by the motion and, I fear, dismayed. I put it to the leader of the Liberal party, the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel), who was quick to say that he had not made a speech in September 1981, that I have a copy of the Daily Telegraph, which quotes him as saying:
The Liberal party in Parliament, and especially in future, in government, must take heed of that mood and use its best efforts to promote unilateral disarmament.

Mr. Gale: That was the other speech, which the right hon. Gentleman made the day before.

Mr. Steel: I have said once to the Secretary of State for Defence—I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept this from me—that the quotation that he has used is not something that I have said, whatever a misprint in a newspaper may say.

Mr. Neale: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would like to take up that matter with the Daily Telegraph as well as with my right hon. Friend.
The interesting aspect of the debate is that it seems that the SDP is comfortable with the Government's policy, but the Liberals are in difficulty. So far as their so-called partnership is concerned, each time the Liberals manage to line up on a pitch laid out by the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen), they find that he has moved the wickets. First, Trident was not an option, but even then the Liberals had difficulty in cobbling together a policy to reconcile the irreconcilable within their party to try to meet the right hon. Gentleman. Now the right hon. Member for Devonport has moved the wickets again. He has said that Trident is an option for the British nuclear deterrent. On the programme "This Week, Next Week" he said that one of the options was a very much reduced Trident. I do not know whether the option of a very much reduced Trident for the SDP is the same as a minimum nuclear deterrent, with whatever necessary modifications it requires, for the Liberal Party. There seems to be considerable difficulty among them on that matter. It is clear that there is a split between them.
The motion meets the SDP's view, but it misrepresents the Liberal party's view. It identifies the all-pervading problem that faces the Labour party in particular and the alliance in general. As Liberals are instinctively in favour of a secure defence policy backed by effective nuclear weapons, they are not convinced. As Liberals are instinctively opposed to nuclear weapons, they find the notion utterly repugnant. In the west country, the Liberal party and the SDP cannot even agree on a bypass. Voters will find them neither dependable nor in possession of a clear policy on defence, and will certainly reject them at the next election.

Mr. John Cartwright: This has been an interesting debate. On occasions, it has generated more heat than light. Certainly, at times it has shown more aggression than defence. The Secretary of State attacked my right hon. Friend the Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel) for making what he called an extraordinary speech, and then went on to make his own extraordinary claim that the progress in arms control in recent years had something to do with the Government. That is a dubious claim, I must say, for a Government who are dragging their feet on the zero-zero option.
The Secretary of State also challenged us on the Trident programme as set out by the Government. He must know that our doubts about Trident are well established. We do not regard the Government's Trident programme as a natural replacement for Polaris. The Government have been coy about the total number of warheads to be deployed. Even if we accept what the Secretary of State said about a 2·5 per cent. increase in destructive power, it is a substantial one.
We do not accept the argument that to deal with the anti-ballistic missile system around Moscow, we simply have to have more warheads. Such systems can be dealt with by decoys and the like. As my right hon. Friend said, why do we continue to set up the Moscow criterion as the one to meet? It is possible to have adequate deterrence based on an ability to threaten unacceptable damage to the Soviet Union somewhere other than Moscow.
There is a new stance on ballistic missiles since the Reykjavik summit. The United States President offered to phase out ballistic missiles over 10 years. We know that Trident D5 will not start its flight tests until 1987. It will not be deployed for the first time on an American submarine until 1989 at the earliest. It is not likely to be fully operational until 1992. Against that timetable, there must be doubt about the ability of the Government to obtain Trident when the time comes.
The Prime Minister may be satisfied with the undertakings she has received from President Reagan. As we all know, the President will not go on forever. If there is to be between the super-powers an agreement which phases out domestic missile systems, it is inconceivable that the United States will supply either the missiles or the back-up system for servicing and so on, on which the system will depend. Therefore, there is bound to be some doubt about the Trident system.
The Secretary of State alleged that the alternatives to Trident that my right hon. Friend set out were some sort of mirage. So much of a mirage are the air-launched cruise missile systems that the United States air force is deploying over 1,400 of them. By 1989, 180 B52 bombers will be equipped with air-launched cruise missiles. As for the sea-launched cruise missiles, 21 American attack submarines are now equipped with Tomahawk systems; by the mid-1990s, the entire United States fleet of 101 attack submarines will be equipped with Tomahawk systems and there will be another 82 surface ships. That does not suggest that the system is a mirage.
We heard from the Secretary of State the usual attempt to rubbish the cruise system as some sort of inferior weapons system.

Mr. Patrick Thompson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Cartwright: I shall not.
The Secretary of State seems to be completely unaware of the state of the advanced cruise missile system in the United States. It has a substantially increased range with stealth technology, which makes it much more effective in evading radar, and laser guidance systems. It is an extremely effective weapons system moving into the next generation. Although it is not the only option that we advocate, it is a powerful one.
I turn to the motion and the lengthy speech of the right hon. Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies)—34 minutes. Unfortunately, he did not tell us anything about the policy of digging tunnels filled with explosives, which he was still advocating as recently as Friday and which, apparently, has since been exploded by the Labour party.

Mr. Denzil Davies: When did I advocate that policy?

Mr. Cartwright: The right hon. Gentleman is quoted in the Western Mail of 29 November, last week, as advocating

the possibilities of digging tunnels filled with explosives".
[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman, on occasions, has advocated the Labour party's policy on nuclear weapons as being the most radical that this country has ever seen. I think that that is a fair description. It needs to be taken seriously on that basis.
Our motion draws attention to the three elements in the Labour party's policy which we think are individually dangerous but which, taken together, are destabilising to NATO and threatening to this country's security. The first is the renunciation of Britain's nuclear weapons. That is largely a domestic issue but, if we follow that policy through, the only nuclear weapons state in NATO will be the United States. That situation would not improve the transatlantic relations between the European and the American members of NATO.
The second element is the policy to remove United States nuclear weapons from Britain. It is worth remembering that these are not simply United States weapons—they are assigned to NATO. Greenham Common and Molesworth are bases that are the direct result of a unanimous decision by NATO in December 1979. If this country renounces that decision, how can we complain if other European nations follow our line? As hon. Members have pointed out, there is a psychological impact on American public and political opinion if the British, of all people, pursue a policy of saying, "Yanks go home," in respect of our nuclear weapons system. There is the risk that Americans will take the view that they should not go on committing large sums of taxpayers' money to defend Europe if the Europeans are not prepared to accept their share of the commitment.
The third element in Labour's strategy is a strightforward challenge to basic NATO nuclear strategy. The hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Critchley) was right when he said that NATO has rested on the ability and the willingness to use nuclear weapons from its beginnings. If a British Government rejected——

Mr. Patrick Thompson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Cartwright: I have two minutes left.
If a British Government rejected that essential tenet of NATO strategy, I do not see how it could logically remain a member of NATO. It would be like trying to stay in the temperance league when one was becoming a confirmed drunkard. It is all very well for the right hon. Member for Llanelli to refer to other members of NATO that do not have nuclear weapons on their soil but accept the basic nuclear strategy of NATO. That is what the Labour party now claims it will not do. The fallacy of that position by the Labour party was cruelly exposed by somebody as well-intentioned towards that party as Mr. Anthony Howard. In The Observer on Sunday he called the Labour party's commitment to NATO, "a nonsense". He said:
There is no way in which a member-country can unilaterally, without consultation, announce its intention of removing the main-spring from an alliance and still declare that it regards itself as being ready, as always, to fulfil all its obligations to its partners.
That is a fair assessment of the Labour party's position.
I am not at all surprised that we have again seen in this debate the unholy alliance between the two Front Benches—[Interruption]—each of them propping up the other like a pair of faded bookends on each end of a mantelpiece, and each of them saying that it is Trident or nothing. We


reject that approach. It is perfectly possible to maintain an effective nuclear deterrent without going down the road of the Government's Trident programme.
We believe that a majority of our people reject the bigger and better nuclear weapons policy of the Government and equally reject the give-it-away neutralist policy of the Labour party. A majority of people support the maintenance of a deterrent on broadly the same level as the existing one, and that common-sense option will be put before the British people at the next election.

The Minister of State for the Armed Forces (Mr. John Stanley): My comment to the hon. Member for Woolwich (Mr. Cartwright) is that the one place where there has not been an alliance during this debate has been on his own benches. Hon. Members will forgive me if I do not refer specifically to each speech. However, the contribution by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Critchley) was one of the most pithy and telling in favour of NATO's nuclear policy that the House has heard.
I should like to deal with one aspect of the defence policy of the official Opposition and then an aspect of the defence policy of the Liberal and Social Democratic parties. The policy of the official Opposition proposes not just a single blow for British defence interests. It would be a major blow for United Kingdom, American and NATO defence interests. The Government and the country at large believe without any question that the policies to which the Labour party has committed itself are quite the most damaging and disastrous to which any British political party has committed itself in 40 years.
The combination of scrapping Polaris, coupled with the decision not to proceed with Trident and the extraordinary commitment by the Leader of the Opposition, who says that he will remove Britain from the American nuclear umbrella, means that a Labour Government would leave the British people more exposed to nuclear blackmail, or worse, than any other NATO country. That is the reality.
As some hon. Members have said, the Labour party policy on American bases in Britain has the most disastrous implications for the commitment of the United States to western Europe. There is no doubt that if that policy were implemented it would result in other European countries also seeking to reduce the extent of their commitment to NATO's nuclear policy. Even more serious, it would result in increasing pressure from the American Congress to withdraw American conventional forces from western Europe and that would mean the unravelling of NATO. That would be set in hand by the policies of the Labour party.
I turn next to one new aspect relating to the implications for NATO of a non-nuclear policy. Most of the attention has been addressed to the strategic implications of a non-nuclear Britain. I remind the House that, as the Leader of the Opposition confirmed only yesterday in a speech in Boston, the official Opposition are committed to removing tactical nuclear weapons as well as strategic nuclear weapons. That has the most profound implications for the military cohesion of NATO. It would remove a significant proportion of SACLANT's tactical nuclear assets in the eastern Atlantic and a considerable part of the nuclear capabilities of the second tactical air force in central and northern Europe, and it would create

a major gap in the nuclear deterrence provided by NATO's land forces on the central front by removing the nuclear capability of the 1st British Corps.
The House must consider what a profoundly impossible military position would be created if there was a four corps army group—such as NORTHAG—with three corps that were nuclear capable and one corps that was not. That would be the effect of the Labour party's policy. The House will note something that has been grasped by those serving in the British Army of the Rhine and those who are part of the regular and Territorial Army reinforcements to the British Army of the Rhine. If the Warsaw Pact was to face a four corps army group, three corps of which were nuclear capable and one of which was not, one does not need to be a military expert to predict on which corps the main weight of attack would be launched. It would fall on the 1st British Corps, disarmed unilaterally by the Labour party.
I would like to consider the position adopted in the debate by the Liberal and Social Democratic party alliance. The position was vividly exposed by the speech of the leader of the Liberal party. The right hon. Gentleman's speech contained an extraordinary Contradiction. He said that as a party of opposition, it was unable to make up its mind about the deterrent and how an Opposition party should meet the minimum deterrence obligations and commitments. The right hon. Gentleman was in such difficulty that he had to list a total of six separate options that the party was considering for maintaining the minimum nuclear deterrence of this country.
There is an extraordinary contradiction here. The Liberals and the Social Democrats are unable to make up their minds in opposition between the six alternatives. However, when it comes to Trident, they can make up their minds instantly and decide that Trident should not be proceeded with. It is a fundamental contradiction for the leader of the Liberal party and Liberal Members to say that they cannot make up their minds about the deterrent but they can decide not to proceed with Trident.
The degree of division that exists on the alliance Benches was exposed when the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) listed his options. He came up with a different set of options for the minimum deterrence from those proposed by the leader of the Liberal party. The right hon. Member for Devonport, was interviewed on the "This Week, Next Week" programme and was asked to outline his options. He said:
a ballistic system not Trident; or a very much reduced Trident missile, with reduced deployment—three submarines and less warheads".
There is the so-called united position of the so-called alliance party. The Leader of the Liberal party outlines his six options without a word about Trident and only a few weeks previously the Leader of the Social Democratic party set out his options on television and said that the Trident missile in some shape or form was one of the options under consideration.
The posturing by the alliance parties that they are united on defence is nonsense. They have cobbled together, through political expediency, an attempt to paper over the cracks and once again tonight they have been exposed as fundamentally divided on the defence issue.
The Labour party favours having no deterrent at all. The alliance favours an inadequate deterrent. Only the Government have a soundly based defence policy.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

The House divided: Ayes 22, Noes 217.

Division No. 20]
[10 pm


AYES


Ashdown, Paddy
Livsey, Richard


Beith, A. J.
Meadowcroft, Michael


Bruce, Malcolm
Owen, Rt Hon Dr David


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Penhaligon, David


Cartwright, John
Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)


Freud, Clement
Shields, Mrs Elizabeth


Hancock, Michael
Steel, Rt Hon David


Howells, Geraint
Wainwright, R.


Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)



Johnston, Sir Russell
Tellers for the Ayes:


Kennedy, Charles
Mr. David Alton and


Kirkwood, Archy
Mr. James Wallace.




NOES


Adley, Robert
Cranborne, Viscount


Aitken, Jonathan
Critchley, Julian


Alexander, Richard
Currie, Mrs Edwina


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Dorrell, Stephen


Ancram, Michael
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.


Ashby, David
du Cann, Rt Hon Sir Edward


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Dunn, Robert


Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)
Durant, Tony


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Dykes, Hugh


Baldry, Tony
Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)


Batiste, Spencer
Evennett, David


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Fairbairn, Nicholas


Bellingham, Henry
Fallon, Michael


Benyon, William
Farr, Sir John


Best, Keith
Fletcher, Alexander


Biffen, Rt Hon John
Fookes, Miss Janet


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)


Body, Sir Richard
Fowler, Rt Hon Norman


Bottomley, Peter
Fox, Sir Marcus


Bottomley, Mrs Virginia
Franks, Cecil


Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)
Fraser, Peter (Angus East)


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Freeman, Roger


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Gale, Roger


Bright, Graham
Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)


Brinton, Tim
Garel-Jones, Tristan


Brooke, Hon Peter
Glyn, Dr Alan


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Goodhart, Sir Philip


Browne, John
Goodlad, Alastair


Bruinvels, Peter
Gorst, John


Bryan, Sir Paul
Gower, Sir Raymond


Buck, Sir Antony
Greenway, Harry


Budgen, Nick
Gregory, Conal


Bulmer, Esmond
Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)


Burt, Alistair
Ground, Patrick


Butterfill, John
Grylls, Michael


Carlisle, John (Luton N)
Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)


Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (W'ton S)
Hanley, Jeremy


Carttiss, Michael
Hargreaves, Kenneth


Cash, William
Harris, David


Chalker, Mrs Lynda
Haselhurst, Alan


Chapman, Sydney
Hawkins, C. (High Peak)


Chope, Christopher
Hayes, J.


Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)
Hayward, Robert


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Heathcoat-Amory, David


Clay, Robert
Heddle, John


Colvin, Michael
Henderson, Barry


Conway, Derek
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Coombs, Simon
Hickmet, Richard


Cope, John
Hicks, Robert


Cormack, Patrick
Hind, Kenneth


Couchman, James
Holt, Richard





Howard, Michael
Robinson, Mark (N'port W)


Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)
Roe, Mrs Marion


Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)
Rowe, Andrew


Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey
Sackville, Hon Thomas


Hubbard-Miles, Peter
Sainsbury, Hon Timothy


Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)
Sayeed, Jonathan


Hunter, Andrew
Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)


Jackson, Robert
Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')


Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick
Shelton, William (Streatham)


Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


Jones, Robert (Herts W)
Shersby, Michael


Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine
Silvester, Fred


Key, Robert
Sims, Roger


Knowles, Michael
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


Knox, David
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Lang, Ian
Speller, Tony


Latham, Michael
Spencer, Derek


Lawler, Geoffrey
Squire, Robin


Lawrence, Ivan
Stanley, Rt Hon John


Lee, John (Pendle)
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


Lightbown, David
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


Lilley, Peter
Stewart, Ian (Hertf'dshire N)


Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Stradling Thomas, Sir John


Lord, Michael
Taylor, John (Solihull)


Macfarlane, Neil
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)
Temple-Morris, Peter


Maclean, David John
Thompson, Donald (Calder V)


McLoughlin, Patrick
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


Madden, Max
Thurnham, Peter


Madel, David
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Major, John
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Malins, Humfrey
Tracey, Richard


Malone, Gerald
Trippier, David


Marland, Paul
Twinn, Dr Ian


Marlow, Antony
van Straubenzee, Sir W.


Mather, Carol
Waddington, David


Maude, Hon Francis
Waldegrave, Hon William


Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Walden, George


Mayhew, Sir Patrick
Waller, Gary


Merchant, Piers
Walters, Dennis


Mills, Iain (Meriden)
Wardle, C. (Bexhill)


Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)
Watson, John


Miscampbell, Norman
Watts, John


Mitchell, David (Hants NW)
Wells, Bowen (Hertford)


Neale, Gerrard
Wells, Sir John (Maidstone)


Nellist, David
Wheeler, John


Nicholls, Patrick
Whitfield, John


Norris, Steven
Wiggin, Jerry


Page, Richard (Herts SW)
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Pattie, Geoffrey
Winterton, Nicholas


Pollock, Alexander
Wolfson, Mark


Portillo, Michael
Wood, Timothy


Powley, John
Woodcock, Michael


Proctor, K. Harvey
Yeo, Tim


Rathbone, Tim



Rhodes James, Robert
Tellers for the Noes:


Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm
Mr. Michael Neubert and


Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey
Mr. Mark Lennox-Boyd,


Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 30 (Questions on amendments):—

The House divided: Ayes 208, Noes 35.

Division No. 21]
[10.12 pm


AYES


Adley, Robert
Beaumont-Dark, Anthony


Alexander, Richard
Bellingham, Henry


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Benyon, William


Ancram, Michael
Best, Keith


Ashby, David
Biffen, Rt Hon John


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter


Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)
Body, Sir Richard


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Bottomley, Peter


Baldry, Tony
Bottomley, Mrs Virginia


Batiste, Spencer
Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)






Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Hawkins, C. (High Peak)


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Hayes, J.


Bright, Graham
Hayward, Robert


Brinton, Tim
Heathcoat-Amory, David


Brooke, Hon Peter
Heddle, John


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Henderson, Barry


Browne, John
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Bruinvels, Peter
Hickmet, Richard


Bryan, Sir Paul
Hicks, Robert


Buck, Sir Antony
Hind, Kenneth


Budgen, Nick
Holt, Richard


Bulmer, Esmond
Howard, Michael


Burt, Alistair
Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)


Butterfill, John
Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey


Carlisle, John (Luton N)
Hubbard-Miles, Peter


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)


Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (W'ton S)
Hunter, Andrew


Carttiss, Michael
Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick


Cash, William
Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)


Chalker, Mrs Lynda
Jones, Robert (Herts W)


Chapman, Sydney
Key, Robert


Chope, Christopher
Knowles, Michael


Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)
Knox, David


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Lang, Ian


Colvin, Michael
Latham, Michael


Conway, Derek
Lawler, Geoffrey


Coombs, Simon
Lawrence, Ivan


Cope, John
Lee, John (Pendle)


Cormack, Patrick
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Couchman, James
Lightbown, David


Cranborne, Viscount
Lilley, Peter


Critchley, Julian
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Macfarlane, Neil


Dorrell, Stephen
MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.
Maclean, David John


du Cann, Rt Hon Sir Edward
McLoughlin, Patrick


Dunn, Robert
Madel, David


Durant, Tony
Major, John


Dykes, Hugh
Malins, Humfrey


Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)
Marland, Paul


Evennett, David
Marlow, Antony


Fairbairn, Nicholas
Mather, Carol


Fallon, Michael
Maude, Hon Francis


Farr, Sir John
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin


Fletcher, Alexander
Mayhew, Sir Patrick


Fookes, Miss Janet
Merchant, Piers


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Mills, Iain (Meriden)


Fowler, Rt Hon Norman
Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)


Fox, Sir Marcus
Miscampbell, Norman


Franks, Cecil
Mitchell, David (Hants NW)


Fraser, Peter (Angus East)
Neale, Gerrard


Freeman, Roger
Neubert, Michael


Gale, Roger
Nicholls, Patrick


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Norris, Steven


Glyn, Dr Alan
Page, Richard (Herts SW)


Goodhart, Sir Philip
Pattie, Geoffrey


Goodlad, Alastair
Pollock, Alexander


Gorst, John
Powley, John


Gower, Sir Raymond
Proctor, K. Harvey


Greenway, Harry
Rathbone, Tim


Gregory, Conal
Rhodes James, Robert


Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)
Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm


Ground, Patrick
Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey


Grylls, Michael
Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)


Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)
Robinson, Mark (N'port W)


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Roe, Mrs Marion


Hanley, Jeremy
Rowe, Andrew


Hargreaves, Kenneth
Sackville, Hon Thomas


Harris, David
Sainsbury, Hon Timothy


Haselhurst, Alan
Sayeed, Jonathan





Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)
Trippier, David


Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
Twinn, Dr Ian


Shelton, William (Streatham)
van Straubenzee, Sir W.


Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)
Waddington, David


Shersby, Michael
Waldegrave, Hon William


Silvester, Fred
Walden, George


Sims, Roger
Waller, Gary


Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)
Walters, Dennis


Soames, Hon Nicholas
Wardle, C. (Bexhill)


Speller, Tony
Watson, John


Spencer, Derek
Watts, John


Squire, Robin
Wells, Bowen (Hertford)


Stanley, Rt Hon John
Wells, Sir John (Maidstone)


Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)
Wheeler, John


Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)
Whitfield, John


Stewart, Ian (Hertf'dshire N)
Wiggin, Jerry


Stradling Thomas, Sir John
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Taylor, John (Solihull)
Winterton, Nicholas


Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)
Wolfson, Mark


Temple-Morris, Peter
Wood, Timothy


Thompson, Donald (Calder V)
Woodcock, Michael


Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)
Yeo, Tim


Thurnham, Peter



Townend, John (Bridlington)
Tellers for the Ayes:


Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)
Mr. Gerald Malone and Mr. Michael Portillo 


Tracey, Richard



NOES


Ashdown, Paddy
Meadowcroft, Michael


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Michie, William


Bruce, Malcolm
Nellist, David


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Owen, Rt Hon Dr David


Cartwright, John
Penhaligon, David


Clay, Robert
Pike, Peter


Cohen, Harry
Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)


Corbyn, Jeremy
Shields, Mrs Elizabeth


Freud, Clement
Skinner, Dennis


Hancock, Michael
Steel, Rt Hon David


Howells, Geraint
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Wainwright, R.


Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)
Wigley, Dafydd


Johnston, Sir Russell
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Kennedy, Charles
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Kirkwood, Archy



Lewis, Terence (Worsley)
Tellers for the Noes:


Livsey, Richard
Mr. David Alton and


Loyden, Edward
Mr. James Wallace.


Madden, Max

Question accordingly agreed to.

Mr. Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House rejects the non-nuclear defence policies of the Labour Party, based as they are on the abandonment of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, the expulsion of United States nuclear forces and bases from Britain, and the withdrawal of Britain from the protection of the American nuclear umbrella, thus jeopardising the United Kingdom's security and the cohesion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation; and the policies of the Liberal and Social Democratic Parties, which advocate the maintenance of a British nuclear capability below the minimum required to provide effective deterrence beyond the mid 1990s; and reaffirms its support for the Government's firm defence policies founded on the need to maintain credible nuclear and conventional forces for Britain within the NATO Alliance.

European Community (Research and Development)

The Minister for Information Technology (Mr. Geoffrey Pattie): I beg to move,
That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 8764/86, a draft Regulation concerning the Framework Programme of Community Activities in the Field of Research and Technological Development 1987 to 1991; endorses the view that the Framework Programme offers an effective means of assessing priorities for European Community Research and Development and for monitoring its implementation; and welcomes the United Kingdom's endeavours to secure a cost-effective programme of high quality scientific and technological research with the main emphasis on activities aimed at promoting Europe's industrial competitiveness.
The Commission has put forward ambitious and far-reaching proposals for Community research and development over the next five years within the context of an overall strategy, or framework programme. It is proposing new or significantly expanded research activities in eight main areas with a total cost of 7·735 billion ecu or about £5·3 billion. Further details are given in the explanatory memorandum before the House. This framework will replace the present framework programme agreed in 1983, which is due to run until the end of 1987. An indicative spending target of around 3 billion ecu or £2 billion was set for the current framework, excluding energy demonstration activities and work in the European Coal and Steel Community, which are not covered by the new proposal.
The origins of the present proposal can be traced to an idea put forward by the Dutch Prime Minister at the European Council in December 1984, when he argued that Europe needed to develop a "technological dimension" to ensure that it was able to compete effectively in world markets, particularly for high technology goods, against United States and Japanese competition. His initiative, rightly, placed technological development in the wider context of the internal market, common standards, public procurement and a trade policy. The proposal now before the House, which is a refinement of two earlier Commission memoranda, concentrates more narrowly on one specific aspect, namely, the strengthening of the research and development capability. There is no doubt of the importance of this aspect, but it is essential to remember the wider picture, which is one to which I shall refer again.
In parallel with the consideration of the Commission's earlier memoranda, discussions were also taking place on what has become known as the Single European Act. Member states decided to include in the Act new treaty articles on technological research and development in recognition of the importance of this subject to Europe's economic future. Article 130 F of the Act explicitly recognises that the primary aim of European Community research and development shall be to strengthen the technological basis of European industry and to encourage it to become more competitive at international level. Article 130 I of that Act sets out the basis for adopting a framework programme. The draft proposal before the House has been prepared in conformity with those articles. It must be adopted by unanimous decision of the Council,

following which specific implementing programmes in the various main areas of research may be adopted over the next five years by qualified majority. It is, therefore, of great importance that this framework should correctly identify the most appropriate areas for European collaborative research, ensure cost-effective management procedures and set a reasonable cost to the total programme. I shall deal with each of these aspects in turn.
I should point out that since the explanatory memorandum was placed before the House there have been some developments which have alleviated some of the Government's concerns described in that memorandum. The Community's scientific and research committee has proposed a revised structure for the research proposals and has redrafted the technical content in a standard format which considerably clarifies the objectives and proposed means of implementing the research. The Commission has also tabled a draft action plan on evaluation which sets out how it intends to measure progress towards the various research objectives which will be embodied in the framework programme. It has also spelt out how it sees Community activity linking with EUREKA activities. These are all helpful developments which, the Government believe, mean that the draft proposal now provides a better basis for decision on priorities and on the size and scope of future European Community research and development. However, significant changes in a number of other respects will still be required before this draft proposal can be adopted.
The Government have always recognised the potential value of collaboration within the European Community in tackling research and development problems. The Single European Act has already recognised that in terms of promoting industrial competitiveness. There are other issues which, because of their sheer size and scale, lend themselves particularly well to European collaboration—the fusion experiment JET is a good example. There are still other areas, such as environmental research, where the problem quite obviously transcends national frontiers and where study on a European basis can provide an additional dimension. Research which will contribute to the establishment of common European standards and thereby to the promotion of the internal market is also an obvious area for joint effort. In assessing Community research proposals the Government are always looking for this European added value, which will ensure that the Community research offers more than national programmes in the same areas. It is obviously important that Community and national programmes should complement and not duplicate one another. It is also important to establish the correct balance between the two. A strong national programme provides the best basis for effective participation in Community activity. The Government have also to bear in mind other international programmes which may offer better ways for collaboration. The European Space Agency, for example, or the European Council for Nuclear Research, CERN, or the European molecular biology laboratory—or most recently EUREKA: all these organisations have their place, and again Community programmes must not duplicate them.
As far as the scientific and technical content of the framework is concerned, the Government have welcomed the proposed emphasis on activities promoting Europe's industrial competitiveness. We attach the highest priority to programmes in the fields of information technologies,


such as ESPRIT, telecommunications, such as RACE, industrial technologies, such as BRITE, and advanced materials. These are all areas where we believe that greater collaboration between member states at the pre-competitive research stage can help to lay the foundations for a true internal market.
The Government therefore support an increased emphasis on research in support of Europe's industrial competitiveness. Previous and current programmes reflect the fact that Community research had its origins in the 1970s when energy problems, quite rightly, dominated our thinking. Priorities have changed. This does not detract from the continuing importance which the Government attach to some of the activities in energy. For instance, the JET experiment is recognised internationally as being first-class science and a field in which Europe is pre-eminent, but we must be careful not to commit ourselves prematurely to the next stage of fusion research, the scale of which may require even wider international collaboration involving the United States and Japan.
The Community's research programmes on non-nuclear energies have also produced some very valuable results as well as identifying some approaches which are no longer worth pursuing. In the Government's view the emphasis in this sector should now be on demonstrating the economic viability of the technologies which have been developed. Moreover, there are established wider forums for international research and development collaboration on these technologies, for example under the auspices of the International Energy Agency. Community programmes in radioactive waste management and radiation protection also quite clearly have an important European dimension and should continue, as should programmes on health and the environment.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: Is this a convenient moment to raise the question of Ispra and the problems of that site in northern Italy, which many of us have visited at some time or another? Is there any way in which Ispra can be improved or shrunk?

Mr. Pattie: There are ways in which Ispra could be improved. If it helps the hon. Gentleman and the House, I may come to that topic in more detail later. In the past few days I have gone around Europe and discussed with my opposite numbers on the Research Council the industrialists' report on the joint research centre at Ispra. I discussed that yesterday in Rome, and obviously the Italian Government are very interested in the matter. I should like to discuss it in detail, perhaps later in the debate. The Italian Government have been particularly receptive to our suggestions, which I will put on the agenda at the Council meeting next Tuesday morning. I assure the hon. Gentleman that much effort has been spent by me and others on this, and it does not require my receiving a brief on the subject. I know the problems of the JRC off by heart.
The Government believe that useful and viable programmes can be maintained in the sectors to which I referred earlier at around the current levels. As well as being concerned with the scientific and technological quality of the Community research, the Government are concerned with the cost-effectiveness of its management. There is sometimes a tendency within the Community to confuse quality with width and to assume that more is necessarily better. In my experience, this is rarely the case.

What we shall be looking for in the framework programme therefore will be activities of the highest scientific and technological quality, but ones which are carefully targeted and sharply focused on areas of direct relevance to Europe's industrial needs and which are managed in a cost-effective fashion. I shall deal with some of these aspects in more detail.

Mr. Paddy Ashdown: Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point about scale?

Mr. Pattie: I wish to deal with these aspects in more detail, and if the hon. Gentleman will allow me to continue he may find that his intervention is more telling.
The Government will be concerned to ensure that Community research and development programmes measure up to the same high standards of management and cost effectiveness as domestic United Kingdom programmes. I regret to say that this has not always been the case in the past. In some sectors, such as ESPRIT, the record is good, but in others, such as the Community's own joint research centres, the record of financial management is poor, and the relevance of the scientific work to the Community's current needs is very limited. The JRC at present consumes a substantial proportion, around 25 per cent., of the total Community expenditure on research and development and over the past 18 months the Government have pressed hard to ensure that any continuing JRC activity secures much better value for money. A panel of eminent European industrialists has been reviewing the centre's work and submitted its report last week. The panel has concluded that the JRC as presently organised does not meet the Community's research needs and that fundamental changes in management procedures will be required. The Government will wish to be satisfied that these changes will be implemented.
I have already mentioned evaluation. This has been another major aspect of the Government's policy. Without effective evaluation of programmes that are based on verifiable objectives there can be no assurance that money is being well spent. The Commission has made some significant progress on this front over recent weeks, which I greatly welcome. Provided we are satisfied that an effective evaluation system is in place, we can have greater confidence in the future management of Community programmes. We need also to consider more imaginative approaches to financing programmes. We should not be limited to 50 per cent. support levels for all industrial programmes. This may be necessary for small and medium-sized enterprises, or in the first year of a project, but we should consider tapering funding levels to test industry's commitment to the research.

Mr. Ashdown: The Minister has moved on beyond the point at which I would have liked to ask him this question. He used the phrase that we should not confuse quality with width, which is an elegant way of saying that the Government intend to cut. Is it not the case that the Prime Minister at Milan, Fontainebleau and subsequently at Luxembourg last December committed Britain, together with other European nations, to increase research and development on a European scale to combat w Eat the Japanese and the Americans are doing? How does the hon. Gentleman square that with the way in which the


Government are dragging their feet on these commitments? Does he not understand why many regard Britain as having reneged on those undertakings, given three times?

Mr. Pattie: The hon. Gentleman always finds it difficult to understand that if one is having a debate in the European forum in this or on any other matter one is debating the size of a new programme, and it has been agreed that the aim of such a new programme should be to increase activity. It is not anything other than realistic to say that we should like to have cost-effective programmes. The hon. Gentleman is rushing to conclusions, as he so frequently does. I cannot hope to reform him.
I find it remarkable" however, that at a stage when we are considering a new framework programme we must have regard to all the expenditure that went on before the first programme, and that we are still having some difficulty in convincing the Commission to come forward with what I think any hon. Member who takes an interest in these matters would recognise as sensible evaluation procedures. All that we are seeking in any programme of this sort is to determine the objectives, whether we shall recognise them when they have been achieved, and whether it will be possible to turn off any of the programmes so that others may be commenced in their place. Surely those sets of procedures, which I have lumped together under the term "evaluation", should be a pre-requisite of any form of activity of this sort. I find it some commentary on the ineffectiveness of the Commission's procedures that we should at this stage, when we are talking about the second framework programme, still be discussing the evaluation procedure. The hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) may find that straightforward and acceptable.

Mr. Ashdown: The Government gave commitments.

Mr. Pattie: Indeed. The hon. Gentleman will have to await the outcome of the Research Council's meeting next week. As I have said, the entire thrust of the programme is to find a series of eight action lines that will address the research and development needs of 12 European nations.

Dr. Jeremy Bray: None of those reasons explains why the Government are trying to keep research off the summit agenda. Are the Government trying to do that? Is it the Government's intention at the Research Council next week, if it is not discussed at the summit, to support an increase in the proportion of the Community's budget that is directed to R and D?

Mr. Pattie: The hon. Gentleman must have intelligence that is better than that which is available to anyone in the House if he knows what attempts are being made to keep various items off or on various agendas. It would not make any difference whether the presidency decided that it did not want to have something on the agenda for debate later this week. If any of the member states wished to raise the item, I have no doubt that they would do so. There are items such as "any other business" or "any other matter" under which a member state can raise the issue in question. I am sure that a member state would find ways of raising it.

Mr. Robert Jackson: As Labour and Liberal Members are talking about cuts in the European research programme, would my hon. Friend care to speculate on the implications for the programmes if the commitment of the two parties to abandon civil nuclear power were implemented?

Mr. Pattie: It will be interesting to hear whether Opposition Members care to take up that issue if they seek to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. That is a matter for them to answer, but I am sure that my hon. Friend's point has been duly noted.
The Government remain concerned about the scale of the Commission's expenditure proposals. At the last Research Council meeting in Luxembourg in October the United Kingdom representative indicated that on the basis of the approach that I have outlined the United Kingdom had concluded that a cost-effective and viable research programme could be drawn up for about 3·5 billion ecus, compared with the Commission's proposed expenditure of 7·7 billion ecus. We believe that expenditure at this level should be adequate to cover all of the priority research programmes at adequate levels, but we recognise that some additional funding may be necessary to respond to the particular interests of other member states. It is a view that is broadly shared by France and Germany. It is a level of funding which the Government believe is consistent with their commitment to increase the proportion of Community resources that are devoted to priority research and development activities. Moreover, in the light of the overall pressures on the Community budget, the Government believe that it is a far more realistic rate of expenditure than that which the Commission proposed.
There are, however, a number of other member states which would be prepared to agree to either the Commission's target expenditure or to figures substantially higher than that which the British Government believe to be necessary. I am at present in the process of consulting my Research Council colleagues to try to determine the common ground on which we might build an agreement on this point. I firmly believe that it should be possible to meet the aspirations of other member states within a total expenditure very significantly less than that which the Commission has proposed, if, as I have argued, research is concentrated on high priority areas, with a clear Community dimension and on the basis of rigorous and effective management procedures. I believe that it is only by following this approach that we can feel confident that European Community research will respond to Europe's research needs, and that lies at the heart of the Government's policy, which I commend to the House.

Dr. Jeremy Bray: Three issues in the European framework programme for research and technological collaboration face the Minister in his capacity as Chairman of the Research Council and at the forthcoming Council meeting. The first issue is the scale of resources that should be committed. The Minister has had a good deal to say about that matter. The second issue is the extent of control that member Governments should seek to reserve to themselves. He hid that issue among a lot of waffle about efficiency and so on, which comes ill from the Minister who had considerable responsibility for the development of airborne radar during his term as a


Defence Minister. The third issue is the relationship between European programmes and national programmes.
The Opposition regard the science and technology policies of the Government as totally inadequate. The restoration of Britain's technological and industrial competitiveness is the avowed ultimate aim that the motion sets for the European programmes. The Government show no signs of waking up to the magnitude of the task. So we have to address ourselves to actions taken within the limitations of present Government policy that might at least leave open the possibility of constructive development by a future Government who are seriously interested in industrial recovery.
We make no objection to the commission's proposals for the Framework programme. The United Kingdom research and development contribution to European programmes will still remain small compared with that of any Government who wish seriously to restore the industrial competitiveness of this country. When the Labour party comes to office, the resources that we will need to commit, and stimulate industry into committing, will certainly allow room to correct the imbalances between possible European and United Kingdom programmes.

Mr. Alan Howarth: The hon. Gentleman will have noticed that the document that we are debating mentions the possibility—indeed, the desirability—of what he calls trans-European mobility of scientists. I do not demur from the hon. Gentleman's desire that the United Kingdom should make a sensible contribution to the cost of the European programme for research and development. Does it strike the hon. Gentleman that, if the Labour party were to carry through the wider public expenditure commitments that it has made and to accept the implications of its taxation policy, there would be no scientists working in Britain because the levels of taxation will drive them out of the country? In America, the top rate of personal taxation will be 28 per cent., whereas in Britain the basic rate is 29 per cent. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, in future, it will be important to ensure at least that our top rates of tax are no higher than those in other member countries of the European Community?

Dr. Bray: No, I certainly do not agree. I regard the hon. Gentleman's intervention as the most arrant hypocrisy. He does not know how much scientists are paid. Can he tell me how much an Imperial college research assistant with a first-class honours degree and three years' experience is paid?

Mr. Howarth: The hon. Gentleman wishes scientists to be paid at internationally competitive rates. The problem is that, if we take it away in taxation, we will lose them.

Dr. Bray: He is paid £8,500, with another £1,500 in London weighting. It is absurd to say that a brilliant young scientist earning £10,000 a year is highly paid. The hon. Gentleman is living in cloud cuckoo land. [Interruption.] The Minister is on to the point. I do not think that Conservative Members really know how badly scientists have been treated by the Government. I do not think that they have ever looked at how the salary scales of scientists compare with the earnings of their friends in the City. They are putting an absurd argument.
Until the Labour party comes into office, the enterprise and insight shown by the Commission and by Commission officials, much maligned by precisely the type of slur that the Minister is casting, so far overshadow the ignorance, timidity and prejudices of present British Ministers that I would cheerfully trust Commission officials better to understand and provide for the real needs of Britain. I hasten to add, for the benefit of those officials, that that will not apply to Labour Ministers.
On the extent of Commission and national control, any coherent programme must be sufficiently negotiable to take advantage of the opportunities open to it, and thereafter to have sufficient continuity. Both considerations point to the Commission being allowed considerable responsibility, which it will be able to exercise in practice only if it remains sensitive to the interests and institutions of member countries. The Commission is far more likely to understand and tolerate the initiatives that we shall have to take nationally to restore national competitiveness if it is allowed and encouraged to play its full part in the initiatives necessary at the European level.
On the relationship between European and national programmes, there is not much to be said about the Government's national programmes, because there are not many of any significance. But let me treat this in the context of the national programmes that we believe to be necessary in the United Kingdom. The test of the adequacy of science and technology policies is that they should contribute what they have to to the restoration of Britain's technological competitiveness. The measure of competitiveness is that we should be able substantially to restore full employment, without generally reducing the expectations of those now in work and without running into the constraints of inflation and the balance of payments. Of course no Government will be able to do that overnight, but it is possible to estimate the research and development resources needed to achieve that result in due course.
Much else is needed in industrial policy in training and investment. But the income of an industrial country above the average global level that can be earned in operating branch factories planted in countries by overseas multinationals is broadly determined by the range of technologies in which it is able to maintain world competitiveness in technology centres with the full range of industrial activities from research and product and process development, through pilot and full-scale production, innovation, marketing, and investment in branch operations elsewhere.

Mr. Jackson: The hon. Gentleman speaks about maintaining a competitive position in a wide range of sectors. I should like to ask him a question about one institution, Harwell, in my constituency—it is concerned with the nuclear industry, which is very important for our competitiveness, and so on—which I have put to my hon. Friend the Minister. What will be the implication for Harwell in my constitency, for this important industry and a range of British competitors of the implementation of the Labour party's policy?

Dr. Bray: The diversification of Harwell into other research, started under the Ministry of Technology in the 1960s, when I was a junior Minister in the Ministry, has proceeded well and will, of course, proceed further. Whether, in the long run, people will choose to work at


Harwell or elsewhere will be a matter for the individuals concerned. It is clear that any Government giving top priority to research and development will create such a buoyant market for scientists and technologists that they will not have the slightest difficulty in finding the jobs that they want wherever they choose to work.
I shall continue with my argument about the competitiveness that is needed to maintain the expectations of those in work while restoring full employment. As a first step, we need broadly to increase the level of our civil research and development from its present 1·6 per cent. of GDP to about the 2·5 per cent. that was reached in Germany and Japan as long ago as 1983. By now, that percentage is probably being approached in France. Translated into money terms, that means increasing our civil research and development from about £5 billion this year, from both Government and industry, to £9 billion per annum in four or five years. That is the amount that will be required to match the 1983 level of Germany and Japan as a proportion of national income. If we measure that against the £1·1 billion per annum proposed by the Commission for the whole of the Framework programme for the whole of Europe, we see that it is tiny in proportion to the figures that I have quoted.
Much can be said about how we can manage this restoration of technological competitiveness, but we cannot deal with that in this debate. It will need a combination of general fiscal incentives for research and development, project support and advisory services, and we must take the necessary action to restore our much eroded science base. I shall relate it to some of the European programmes, such as BRITE.
A lot can and should be done to update the technology of our established manufacturing industries. The new EURAM programme in advanced materials gives us the opportunity to bring our metals and new materials manufacturing industries up to speed, so that they are better able to complement the investment that more newly industrialised countries will make in established technologies, the installation of which we are only just completing. However, the fastest rate of growth will continue to be in information technology.
The industrial participants tell me that the European RACE programme in telecommunications research is going well. Before long that will reach the point where major issues of policy will be raised on the operation of switchable wideband fibre optic networks, procurement, and industrial structure. The European Commission deserves full credit for having encouraged Mr. Ian Mackintosh to put forward his proposals for Eurogrid, the switchable wideband fibre optic network, which he has now published in his book "Sunrise Europe." That book is far more readable than most Commission documents. The RACE programme is plainly pointing in that direction.
The connection of every home and workplace in Europe into a switchable wideband network, and still more the value added services that that will make possible, offer a vehicle by which Europe will be able to catch up with the large and still rapidly increasing lead which the United States and Japan have built up in information technology industries and services, a catching up process that no European country would be able to afford on its own.
I have seen no sign that the Government have woken up to the challenge and the opportunity offered. Indeed, I see many signs that they are still heavily prejudiced against the active industrial policy that is needed. We have seen in this debate their foot-dragging over the European framework programme of research and development. It is the more to be deplored because Britain's role could be decisive. Certainly Germany, led by Siemens and the Bundespost, opposes RACE because it thinks it can go it alone with the rest of Europe falling in behind. But it can not, and if the rest of Europe pushes on with RACE and shows signs of developing it into Eurogrid, Germany would soon join in. It is quite specifically the British Government who are blocking progress.
We do not have to be starry-eyed about Europe to see the role that European technological co-operation can play—and it would not be to the exclusion of the rest of the world. Technologically, the world is one, and includes the developing and newly industrialised countries as well as Japan and the United States. The House should urge the Government to give more positive support to the programmes of European research and technological development than is reflected in their recent actions and in the motion before us.

Mr. Richard Page: Such is the nature of this place that we have only 90 minutes to debate a subject that I believe could and perhaps will be the basis of the growth in wealth and employment throughout the EEC and in the United Kingdom during the next decade or so.
I support the establishment of the framework, but I can also appreciate the Government's concern at the volumes of money that are involved. However, £5·3 billion over five years is really not a great deal of money when one considers the programmes in Japan and the United States. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister has reversed the television slogan "Never mind the quality, feel the width" by claiming that we must aim for quality. I would like to believe that is correct, but we should not stint when a little more research into quality is needed. If we are to stay ahead or if we are to stay level with the opposition, we must have the programmes that will produce the results that we need for our industries to provide all the jobs and the growth that we want to see in future.
I do not agree with the principle of throwing money at a problem. However, when we consider the amount of money that goes into an early warning system or a Chevaline, and compare that sum with what is necessary for the growth of so many bases of our industrial companies, £5·3 billion over five years tends to be put into perspective.
Having said that, I would like to show that I am impartial in my comments by referring to the comments made by the hon. Member for Motherwell, South (Dr. Bray). I listened to the hon. Gentleman's criticisms and I recalled the period of the previous Labour Government when the Labour party was supported by the dynamic Liberal party. I struggled to recall the initiatives taken by the Labour Government to assist British industry. All I can think of is the National Enterprise Board. After that, there is a big black hole.
The Government deserve credit and praise for what they have done to help industry through Alvey, ESPRIT, EUREKA, research in advanced communications in


Europe, BRITE and all the other programmes put forward by this Government. My hon. Friend the Minister can dismiss the criticism, because we are doing something, unlike the Labour party.
Under the eight programmes within the framework, all the new technologies except that of space is covered. Space technology will be covered under another aspect of the EEC. I will not argue with the general principle. There is, however, always a "but" and many hon. Members raise the "buts". It must be sensible to have a framework that prevents the duplication of problems within each member state. I hope that we can be sure that we will get our share of the action. The calculations on the Airbus programme have been complex but in the programme proposed under the framework, there will be nearly 1,000 projects. There are 210 projects in ESPRIT, RACE has 31, and EUREKA has 72. There will be many programmes to be covered by the £5·3 billion. The control of those programmes will be very important. The need for control is self-evident—my hon. Friend the Minister made that point—because control has not always been successful in EEC activities.
Within all those activities, there is danger of two overlaps. First, there must be doubt about the proposed division of research areas and the scale of the programmes. For example, there will be an overlap between the research programmes on the environment, under the No. 1 programme on the quality of life, and biotechnology. The environmental protection and study of natural and technological hazards seem to be inextricably linked with the management of agricultural resources. Therefore, the Government's reservations about the basis on which the Commission has grouped some of those activities are well founded. They were right to ask for clearer details on the content of the programmes and to stress the need for objective management and evaluation. I support what my hon. Friend the Minister has said on that point.
The second overlap is that within the United Kingdom systems and programmes. It is important that we have a clear research and development target in information technology, as that is the area to which the greatest amount of money will be allocated. My hon. Friend will remember that the report of the committee chaired by Sir Austin Bide, currently being studied by the Government, recommended additional public expenditure of about £300 million. If we extend that over the next five years, in the public and private sectors it will be about £550 million. Therefore, we must know how the European and our domestic information technology programmes will be co-ordinated.
Are the priorities recommended by the Commission and the Bide committee compatible? Will they come together? It is not yet clear how the collaboration between the academic and research teams envisaged by the two bodies might be dovetailed. That must be clarified.
In addition, the West Germans have said that they wish to run their own information technology programme rather than join the EEC programme. The Government must make absolutely clear the balance between the Community programmes and our national research.
The Commission's proposals will have to be judged on its success in co-ordinating all those factors. If it does not co-ordinate them properly, that will lead to bickering and dissent. I do not want that to happen. As I said at the start of my speech, I believe that the growth and the wealth of our country will rely upon how effectively the programme goes forward.
My next point—a fairly obvious one that has been raised in the past—is that every one of the programmes must have a commercial point to it—a product that will go into the market places of the world and be sold at the right price so that work activity can be generated in the Community. It is no good doing a series of almost esoteric research and development if someone else picks up the rewards at the end of the day.
When my hon. Friend enters the long and detailed negotiations in the Community, I hope that he will spend every possible moment ensuring that every programme has sales and jobs at the end of it. If he does that, he will have done an invaluable service to this country for the next 10 or 20 years.

Mr. Paddy Ashdown: I followed the speech of the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Page) carefully and I wholeheartedly share his belief that the future of Europe and of this nation will depend on the invention and especially the application of new technologies. We must all agree with that because the Government have said it. That is their rhetoric, but the sad fact is that when it comes to be translated into action they will find ever-more elegant phrases to justify cutting the money available to achieve it. We must judge people not on their words but on their delivery. If that is the future for Britain, as the Prime Minister herself would agree, we are doing miserably badly. Britain is now running an increasing deficit in high technology which, in my view, is at least in part a direct result of the fact that the level of research and development in this country has become catastrophically low. I shall deal with that aspect in a moment.

Mr. Richard Page: rose——

Mr. Ashdown: I shall be giving figures to back my case and I shall be happy to allow the hon. Gentleman to intervene at that point.
We must welcome the programme proposed in the Community document. I believe fundamentally in new technology, in research and development and in the new inventions that we require if we are to be competitive and efficient in the world into which we are moving, only if we tackle those issues on a European scale. There is scope, of course, for national programmes, but tying it all together on a European scale is vital because it is the only way to stand up to the competition of the United States and Japan in this area. In so far as the Community "framework programme" actually provides a framework for this, it is to be welcomed.
I must confess that the language in which we are invited to participate in the Single European Act strikes me as obfuscatory and odd. Last night my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Wainwright) had to read from a Community document in French because there was no English translation. I almost wish that the document before us were in French. I fancy, indeed, that it may be a translation from the French, as the English is so bad in some places. On what appears to be page 6—the copy is so poor that it is hard to tell—we are told:
The Community programmes, on the other hand, combine a strategic conception of the 'top-down' type with 'bottom-up' implementation.


What on earth does that mean? A Single European Act that is both top down and bottom up—the mind boggles. Unfortunately, there is worse to come. The document continues:
On the other hand, the precise definition of the projects and their implementation are prompted by an open, transparent and variable-geometry process promoting cross-fertilisation among the industrial and scientific partners involved not only at the level of the projects themselves but also downstream of their implementation.
One is seriously worried at the terminology involved. What on earth is a "variable-geometry" organisation? Are we being asked to join some kind of swing-wing quango?

Mr. Nicholas Soames: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Ashdown: If the hon. Gentleman can eludicate, I shall certainly give way. Perhaps he could do it in French.

Mr. Soames: I could indeed, but for the benefit of the public school boys present I shall not do so.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that his comments merely reinforce what my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Page) said—that none of this is possible without a clear, coherent management strategy and that unless we hang out for that strategy we may as well sink the whole thing?

Mr. Ashdown: I take the point, which echoes what the Minister, too, was saying. Members of all political parties sometimes take comfort in the aphorism, which I may well have invented in front of the mirror myself, that ideas are not responsible for the people who believe in them. One might add that ideas coming into implementation are not responsible for the bureaucrats who murder them.
The Community programme is a great idea, but I hope that in trying to translate it into English, French or any other language so that we may understand and express the grand transcendental notion of the Single European Act the bureaucrats in Brussels will find a better method than the appalling and meaningless prose of the document before us. If the Government intend to hang out for a better way of expressing things in the Berlaymont in Brussels, I am frankly all for it. The Government fairly comment in their explanatory note that there are areas, including
the presentation of information in the document,
in which they look forward to a more professional approach. So do I. In no circumstances do we wish to achieve anything less than the best value for money that we can get out of these programmes, paltry and small though they are. I welcome the Government's decision to drive and push for that.
I hope that the House will forgive me—I have been in it long enough to be a sceptic—but I realise that when the Government use phrases such as value for money they do not mean just value for money; rather it is a front for cuts. That is what is at the heart of this proposal. The evidence is there and it is perfectly plain and I shall seek to touch on it in a moment.
A careful reading of the Minister's elegant prose at the beginnning of the debate will reveal that, when it comes to it—I repeat what the hon. Member for Motherwell, South (Dr. Bray) said—it is the British Government, perhaps assisted by the West German Government, who are dragging their feet on this. If I felt that the Minister

was being honest and admitting that the Government are dragging their feet to get value for money and better management, I would accede in full to the proposals put forward by the Commission—I would be happy about that—but I have the strong suspicion that the Government are using this as an excuse to cut funds for vital projects in the future.
Despite those caveats, we must welcome the Government's motion, however the last sentence of the Government's motion—I shall read it to the House for fear that there mught be a suggestion that I was out of order—reads:
; and welcomes the United Kingdom's endeavours to secure a cost-effective programme of high quality scientific and technological research with the main emphasis on activities aimed at promoting Europe's industrial competitiveness.
We must substantially disagree with the Government on that point, because research and development in Britain is falling to disastrous levels. Those levels cannot sustain our industrial needs, even our present needs, let alone what they should be. They are well below the levels needed to follow along the lines suggested by the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, South-West to promote the new technologies.
The Government tell us that research and development should be increasingly industry financed—I do not dissent from that as a concept—but if one considers the figures one will discover that Britain's industry-financed research and development is less than that of Belgium, Italy or Luxembourg. Surely we must do something to turn that round, and if industry does not do so, Government must cajole it to do so or, indeed, take over such financing.
Britain cannot afford to fall below the line on this matter, but that is not the end of the story. It appears that 60 per cent.—a massive sum in comparison to any other European nation—of finance for research and development goes into the defence sector. If we had a decent freedom of information Act we might have a situation similar to that which exists in the United States where a degree of such finance will spin off into the private sector. Our secret system prevents that from happening.
One does not have to accept my word on this but take, for example, the words of Sir George Porter president of The Royal Society and a close friend and mentor of the Prime Minister. He says that morale amongst scientists and technologists in Britain is at the lowest level reached this century and he blames that, fairly and squarely, on cuts in Government funding.
The suggestion made by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) that the Labour party's policies would cause some kind of vast exodus of scientists from Britain came strangely from the mouth of a person whose party has encouraged that exodus to the point that, by the time the next Government come in, one doubts whether there will be a corpus of scientific ability in Britain [HON. MEMBERS: "Come on."] I dare say that that may be slightly over stating the case, but figures will prove my point.
The truth is that, as pointed out by Sir George Porter, 82 fellows of The Royal Society, a premier British scientific institution, are now resident in the United States.
Last year I visited Silicon valley and it struck me as extraordinary and tragic that the second largest population in that area is British, larger than the Hispanic population. It is an area noted for the research and


development of high technologies. We are witnessing the beginnings of a brain drain from Britain because of the lack of Government support for research and development.
It was significant that the Minister touched on the question of space research and development. I wonder whether the Minister has read the excellent article by Admiral James Eberle published in The Times on 13 November 1986 in which he said that Britain's lack of any policy towards space research and development was losing the country serious opportunities in that area.
I return to the point that I tried to put to the Minister during his speech, because it is within that context that we must look at this programme. We must remember that the Government made commitments at Milan, Fontainebleau and Luxembourg to increase the resources going into research and development. Calling on them to honour those commitments in no way means that we do not wish to get the best value for money. Those commitments have been made, and it is reasonable for people in this country who study these matters, and for many of our European partners as well, to regard British action following those commitments as reneging upon them and being thoroughly unhelpful.

Mr. Richard Page: I have listened with great care to the hon. Gentleman's criticism of the Government's actions over the last few years. What actions were taken by the Labour-Liberal Government between 1974 and 1979 that have somehow brought about this dramatic situation?

Mr. Ashdown: I remind the hon. Gentleman that there was not a Liberal Government in 1974 to 1979. We participated with the Labour party. I also remind him that during that period industrial production was going up while unemployment, inflation and mortgage rates were coming down. The figures show that that was one of the best periods of Government that Britain has had for a very long time.
I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman disagrees, but I ask him to look dispassionately at the figures for industrial production during that period and to compare them with the present figures. In fact, one sixth of our manufacturing base has been wiped away under this Government and 2 million jobs have been lost. We are now running a balance of trade deficit that will mount in the years to come and will become one of the most significant factors in our economic decline unless policies are changed. For the first time in 150 years Britain had been reduced to being an importer of manufacturing goods. The devastation wreaked by this Government in the last seven or eight years has been a disaster for Britain, and those birds will come home to roost.
In that climate the need for research and development is now so much greater than when our economy was much more prosperous. There was less of a need then, but there is a desperate need now.

Dr. Bray: There was an increase up to about 1980 in research and developmemt in industry specifically financed by both Government and industry. Since then it has fallen.

Mr. Ashdown: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for those figures, which I did not have to hand. I am sure that the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, South-West has taken note of them and will bear them in mind for the future.

However, I recognise that the figure I am giving about the industrial devastation of Britain, including the high technology sector, are uncomfortable facts. If the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, South-West studied them he might realise that our industrial base and economy are now facing a desperate situation.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that the only way out is to encourage the new technologies and to build on Britain's inventiveness. That is why the Government's policy of dragging their feet within the European framework is so damaging.

Mr. Richard Page: rose——

Mr. Ashdown: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not give way, but other hon. Members wish to participate and I am coming to a close.
Research and development in Britain is now woefully inadequate and falling behind. In Europe, the total sum that will go towards research and development over three years from the Alvey and ESPRIT programmes combined is still less than what IBM gives in one year. I welcome the framework programme and this document, provided it means a serious approach to a pan-European research and development programme with adequate funding to face up to the competition in the world markets. If on the other hand this is yet another piece of rhetoric, or a cover or front, behind which this Government will again drag their feet, hold up progress in Europe, cut the budgets and obfuscate and delay, no one can welcome it. We must give the Government the benefit of the doubt on this occasion, but we shall be watching to see whether the goods are delivered. If they are not that will prove a disaster for Britain and, I hope, for the Government.

Mr. Alan Howarth: Plainly, there is much on which the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) and I are bound to disagree, but I warmed to the section of his speech in which he drew attention to the abuse of language in this document. One feels for my hon. Friend the Minister as he grinds through the meetings of the research council and has to deal with this fairly intractable prose. Therefore, there is all the more reason for congratulating the Government, and especially my hon. Friend, on the momentum which this area of EC policy has achieved during the British presidency.
All hon. Members would agree that scientific research is a suitable area for international co-operation. Science, properly, knows no frontiers and, as a distinguished scientist said in a letter to The Times this week, it is becoming increasingly meaningless, in academic terms, to talk about British science. I welcome a move towards the internationalisation of our policy in this area.
The Commission's proposal of 5 August sketches some principal areas of research activity that are envisaged in the framework programme. They include research into information technology, microelectronics and data processing and research that will lead to the modernisation of the older European industries. Britain should welcome that. Sadly, for too long, we shrank from embracing the modernisation of too many of our industries. This category includes research into materials such as ceramics and composite materials and research into advanced design and manufacturing techniques.
Such research programmes are immensely expensive, and have already acquired a formidable momentum in


competitor countries such as Japan and the United States of America. Earlier this year, I visited the fifth generation computer project in Japan. I did so in company with the hon. Member for Motherwell, South (Dr. Bray), and I hope that he will allow me to say that his experienced and learned appreciation of the work being undertaken there greatly enhanced the benefit that I gained from the visit. The fifth generation computer project is an immense programme. It is Government-inspired and funded, it has enlisted contributions from all the major Japanese electronics and computer manufacturers, it has drawn in the best academic contributions from other countries, including Britain, and it is focused in a pragmatic and down-to-earth way on eventual commercial application. It suits those Japanese firms and Japan itself to undertake that research co-operatively at the pre-competitive stage, and I welcome the Government's thrust towards the development of similar pre-competitive research on a European scale.
Defence is not a policy area where the EC has any standing, but defence procurement is important for industry and the benefits of European research to industry are our central concern in this debate, so I hope that I will not be ruled out of order if I allude briefly to defence. We cannot afford the wasteful duplication of extremely expensive research and development among fragmented European NATO members. After Reykjavik, and after the Democrats' capture of the Senate, we must focus more clearly on the need for Europe to provide effectively for its own defence. Whether research would be on the means to produce conventional weapons that we may need or on aspects of the strategic defence initiative, such research is massively expensive and massively important. The research must be concerted, if not by the EC, by a parallel system in Europe.
In medical and environmental research, we are on less controversial territory. Who would dispute that we must mobilise all the resources that we can to find a cure for AIDS, which is proposed as an example of the first framework item of research to improve the quality of life? One major strategic programme in this area, unstintingly funded, would be preferable to a variety of fragmented programmes. Is it not right, too, that we should invest in research into protection against radiation? If we are to have nuclear power, we must leave nothing to chance. After Chernobyl, the public will not let us do so.
Another area of research proposed in the document is biotechnology. This is particularly necessary in the European Community, weighed down as it is by the excesses of the common agricultural policy. Developments in biotechnology should, as the document says, help a movement towards new relationships between agriculture and industry. Agriculture could diversify towards objectives other than food production, working with the pharmaceutical and energy industries.
Agricultural research should also contribute to the solving of environmental problems. The Institute of Horticultural Research at East Mailing leads Europe in research on root stocks. That institute has proposed to the Commission a project to develop micropropagation/genetic manipulation for forest trees. The institute will develop such systems for broadleaved trees such as poplar, oak and birch, building on its experience working with fruit trees. This project should be immensely attractive to

parts of Europe where people are worried about dying forests. It would be beneficial both environmentally and politically.
Agricultural research should not of course be blamed for the existence of surpluses. It is a benign contribution to enable two blades of grass to grow where previously only one grew. Surpluses are the product of political decision—or indecisions—which give incentives to produce crops where markets are already saturated. The remedy is to stop doing that, not to discontinue agricultural research. The history of agriculture alternates between feast and famine. We in Europe are sated in this generation, but it will not always be so. To condemn ourselves to ignorance in the future would be an extraordinary folly.
One justifiable area of agricultural research would be in import substitution. We tend not to think about the need to ensure supplies until a crisis is upon us. Hon. Members are now aware of a crisis. The navy bean crop in Canada and the United States has failed this year. Navy beans are what we import—no less than 80,000 tonnes of them each year—to turn into baked beans. Baked beans are an indispensable part of the English way of life—indeed, of House of Commons life. The fact is that they are going to be horribly expensive before long.
So far no variety of navy bean has been successfully developed which will grow in our climate. But the preeminent centre of research into beans in Europe is the National Vegetable Research Centre, now a part of the Institute of Horticultural Research. In a fit of what I must charitably call absence of mind, public funding for research into beans in the United Kingdom has been cut. It was cut at a late stage in the programme when new varieties were already in the national list trials. The cut was made without consultation with the National Seed Development Organisation—a commercial organisation which the Government created to exploit public-sector bred varieties. Perhaps, however, relief is at hand. The NVRC has applied to the Commission for Community funding for farm-level development of navy bean cultivars.
Apart from averting mass demonstrations by frustrated housewives, it makes sense to find a new crop into which British and European farmers can diversify. I hope that the Government will therefore smile on this application.
That brings me to another point. Industry, farming and the academic world will be disposed to welcome the Government's commitment to a collaborative approach to European research. But they will ask whether this commitment means that more cash will be forthcoming.
The experience of the IHR is that if it is successful in obtaining European funding, the benefit is docked off at home. I wondered whether it was a little ominous when the Minister talked about complementing rather than duplicating. There seems to be a Catch-22. The Commission does not want to find projects which are not funded by Governments in the member states. But our Government do not want to fund anything that is funded from Europe. The Commission believes in additionality; I am not sure that our Government do.

Mr. Jackson: My hon. Friend has talked about the importance of giving incentives to research programmes without losing national funds. What about the Plant Breeding Institute at Cambridge? I understand that the Government are contemplating the privatisation of that


body without any of the assets going to the Agricultural and Food Research Council, which must damage its ability to take advantage of privatisation.

Mr. Howarth: My hon. Friend draws attention to a real issue. That research establishment is an excellent one and it is incumbent on the Government to ensure that it has the resources that it needs. I hope that the apprehensions of my hon. Friend will prove to be unjustified.
I noted the reservation expressed by my hon. Friend the Minister about the total cost of the programme—£5·3 billion. That is not an excessive sum to be spent jointly by 12 of the wealthiest countries in the world. But I know there is a problem. We have, rightly, been struggling with might and main to limit the growth of the Community budget. But it should not follow that we should reduce the common policy for science and technology to almost nothing. Surely the proper reaction—I am sure that my hon. Friend must be sympathetic to this—is to acknowledge that this is a good policy in which we should invest. To make room for it we must work harder still to limit the common agricultural policy. We must cut it from the 73 per cent. or 79 per cent. or whatever grotesquely disproportionate percentage of the budget it turns out to be. I am informed that the CAP overshoot is likely to be £2 billion this year. That is where savings should be made, not on research funding.
My hon. Friend the Minister in his explanatory memorandum talks about the appropriateness of a "gradual" increase in the proportion of Community resources earmarked for research and technology. That, I suggest with regret, would be a formula for a continued gradual relative decline in Europe's industrial competitiveness. yet the very purpose of the policy is to promote Europe's industrial competitiveness.
The last question I should like to consider is that of co-ordination of policy in practice. Within the United Kingdom we have, notoriously, found it hard to co-ordinate and establish priorities in publicly funded research. Ministerial responsibility for programmes has often been split between, for example, the Department of Education and Science and the Department of Trade and Industry, or between the Department of Education and Science and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, with the research councils independently playing a major part in the allocation of taxpayers' money. Responsibility has been diffused to the point at which Ministers in all Governments have too often been unwilling to acknowledge paternity and to fight to secure adequate funding for particular programmes. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence has taken an unwarrantedly high proportion of total public expenditure on research and development.
If we face such difficulties within our country, how will 12 European Governments sort out their policy on research? Even to establish the framework programme will be difficult. It will be hugely more difficult to make progress on the second stage of negotiating specific programmes.
It is proposed to outflank that second range of difficulties by having decisions taken by qualified majority. I wonder whether my hon. Friend would agree that the Government will need to clarify their systems and lines of communications between Departments, with industry, and with the academic world, so tha they are prepared to argue effectively in Europe the case that they

believe is right. We also need a strong presence of our scientists and officials on the advisory committees of the Commission.
I regard this policy as an exciting prospect, but it raises important and difficult issues. I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing us to this point and I look forward to him leading the Community further forward.

Mr. Norman Atkinson: The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) aroused passions earlier by talking about the Labour party and the export of scientific and engineering talent. He proceeded to read out seven or eight sheets of notions conceived before he listened to the Minister setting out the Government's case. I do not know whether he is interested in the debate, but he raised the question of income tax. That has nothing to do with the problem. He shares the romanticism, to which the Prime Minister gave credence yesterday at Question Time, that this has to do with taxation. It has to do with the amounts of petty cash paid to our scientists and engineers. By comparison with any other country in the world, they are so badly underpaid that we are now the biggest exporter of scientific and engineering talent. That is our major problem. Moreover, scientists have to go to other countries to obtain any continuity in their work, and that is another reason for their leaving this country.
We were asked what the Labour party's attitude was towards nuclear issues and research. The phasing out of obsolete reactors does not mean that a Labour Government would switch off the sort of research funds that we are discussing tonight. Phasing out certain reactors does not mean that the United Kingdom will abandon all its studies into, say, particle physics. That is what the great bulk of this money is about. Of course research should continue into fast reactor technology and into fusion, and all the other things connected with CERN. Britain, of necessity, must be interested in high temperature reactors. If nuclear sources of heat can be used for purposes other than the generation of electricity, such research will play a significant part in any future programme, particularly in relation to the conversion of coal.
We are concerned about the restoration of British industry, because that is the most important factor. However, as time is short, I shall concentrate on one point, even though there is much that I would like to say. The fourth item involves £281 million, which is to be given for the application of new technologies to the modernisation of industrial sectors. That worries me, because the amount of funding is obviously insufficient. If the fifth item, involving nuclear research, is taken away, along with information technologies, we are left with about £3 billion out of a total of £5 billion. When the rest is divided up, the amounts are very small.
In the application of new technologies, I am concerned about the translation of pure theory into applied technology. Labour Members who have studied the situation in Europe know about the weaknesses. There is an absence of any sort of co-ordinating agency. All of us would applaud what has been said about the necessity for enforced managerial controls over research programmes of this size, but commercial application is involved. In the remaining days of this month, I hope that the Minister will raise time and again the whole question of how a system can work in the absence of such an agency. I do not know,


for example, what Sir Austin Bide is doing in his investigation in relation to Alvey, and so on. I do not know what conclusions he has reached.
Leading personalities in the scientific world are concerned about the lack of co-ordination, on how manufacturing industry is able to take advantage of what is available and is alerted to the potential of research. The transitional mechanism is non-existent in Europe, and we should give attention to this and to the fact that multinational companies play such a dominant part in European industry and have their own methods of tuning in to what is happening.
An example of the lack of co-ordination is the fact that there is no clearing house for all the PHD research in Europe. It is not fed into a central computer and fed out into industry so that companies understand what is being done. Therefore, much of the work is lost because it is not available to industry.
The hon. Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames) ignores other hon. Members on similar occasions, but he is looking with increased agitation at his watch, so I shall make my final point. If the Minister will agree that a co-ordinating agency is a central part of the management that he seeks, I shall make room for the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Nicholas Soames: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson), who is a regular attender at these debates, and an expert on this subject.
Bearing in mind the fundamental and desperate problems of the balance of our research programmes, it is a pleasant change for us to be debating research programmes that are not devoted to the military sector. Self-evidently, there are relevant and pertinent programmes included in this proposal, and some worthwhile research is being carried out, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) has said, particularly on cancer and AIDS, all of which will be appreciated by all members of the European Community.
I urge my hon. Friend the Minister not to come to an agreement on this until clear and definitive performance yardsticks have been agreed, and he is satisfied that they are in place. These programmes are far too vital for the future of European, and therefore our industry, for the calculations to be wrong, which would lead to some of the programmes being abandoned. These great new industries in Europe will be able to compete internationally only on a pan-European scale, so it is crucial that the initial research is correct.
I greatly welcome the approach of my hon. Friend the Minister. He has a mammoth task, and knows that it is absurd to pretend that the United Kingdom can compete in the industrial big league without some fundamental changes in our research programmes. A balance of 60 per cent. going to military research is a disgrace for an industrialised Western country which has been at peace for over 40 years.
The Government should make the funding of basic and strategic science once more their priority, and let us leave to industry the business of funding applied research and development. As for the European programmes, my hon. Friend is right to be concerned about the Commission's

ability to manage these vast but excellent plans. He should proceed only when he is satisfied that the matter is properly gripped.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: I was in Norwich yesterday at the university of East Anglia, where Professor Davis and Doctor Duncan of the biology department were two of many who have said at many universities that they think that Europe is becoming much more efficient in giving out money in the most worthwhile way. I hand over that bouquet for what it is worth. There is now a high regard for what the Commission is doing in many British universities.
I strongly support any moves that the Government make on wider fusion research, and bringing in the Americans and the Russians.
Cannot the problem of CERN and the exchange rates be sorted out? Every other country has arrangements to ensure that, if the exchange rate goes against it, particle physics does not take up so much of the scientific budget.
In the light of EMBO, we should consider the case for a biological sciences council.

Mr. Pattie: I share the view of some of those who have participated in the debate that we have not had long enough, but anyone who takes an objective view of the debate and reads the contributions will find, even if the names of the contributors are deleted to ensure absence of party bias or rancour, that the most constructive contributions have come, almost without exception, from the Government Benches.
I compliment especially my hon. Friends the Members for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) and for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Page). The speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon was one of the most thoughtful and constructive that we have had on research and development for quite a long time and it will repay further study. Complementing and duplicating was a topic embraced by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, South-West when he was talking about the Bide report and how we can be satisfied that there will be compatibility with European Community programmes. When my hon. Friend studies the Bide report he will note that one section is set aside specifically for European Community activity. There is a deliberate and positive attempt to recognise convergence, complementality and avoidance of duplication, and there will be two related programmes.
I noted with interest the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon raised about older European industries and defence expenditure, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames) referred a short while ago. I noted also the comments that were made on agriculture and horticulture research. I am sure that the report of them will be read carefully by those in other Government Departments.
The hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) made an extremely constructive contribution, if I may say so. He addressed himself to the question of how we can ensure that innovations become marketable products. That is one of the thrusts of the Bide report, which suggests that others are thinking on the same lines as the hon. Gentleman. The hon. Gentleman talked also about co-ordination. The


various programmes that have been introduced have been established on the basis of a minimum of bureaucracy and the maximum involvement by industry.
The hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) urged me to say that we want action and not rhetoric. In supporting innovation, the Government have spent twice as much in real terms as that which was being spent in 1979 by the previous Labour Government. That is action and not rhetoric. The establishment of the Alvey programme in 1982 was action and not rhetoric. The establishment of ESPRIT 1 in the European framework programme under the jurisdiction of the Government was action and not rhetoric. The establishment of RACE under the Government was also action and not rhetoric. The Bide report was initiated by the Government. The EUREKA programme has been adopted, taken into account and made more realistic by the Government, and we have established the British National Space Centre.
As for the hon. Member for Motherwell, South (Dr. Bray), he wrote an article which appeared in The Guardian recently, which was described later by someone as nothing more than "pseudo scientific piffle." We did not even have the "pseudo scientific piffle" this evening. We had opposition to various programmes announced by the hon. Gentleman. He claimed that the Government are opposing the basic research in Europe programme and industrial technologies in opposing EURAM. Let me make it clear that we are supporting BRITE and EURAM in doubled expenditure terms. We want to double the expenditure—do I have to repeat that again?—yet the hon. Gentleman is saying that we are dragging our feet. This is——

It being one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 14 (Exempted Business).

Question agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 8764/86, a draft Regulation concerning the Framework Programme of Community Activities in the Field

of Research and Technological Development 1987 to 1991; endorses the view that the Framework Programme offers an effective means of assessing priorities for European Community Research and Development and for monitoring its implementation; and welcomes the United Kingdom's endeavours to secure a cost-effective programme of high quality scientific and technological research with the main emphasis on activities aimed at promoting Europe's industrial competitiveness.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.

DANGEROUS DRUGS

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.).
That the draft Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Modification) Order 1986, which was laid before this House on 13th November, be approved.—[Mr. Garel-Jones.]

Question agreed to.

JUDGES

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.).
That the draft Maximum Number of Judges (Scotland) Order 1986, which was laid before this House on 12th November, he approved.—[Mr. Garel-Jones.]

Question agreed to.

NORTHERN IRELAND

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.).
That the draft Recreation and Youth Service (Northern Ireland) Order 1986, which was laid before this House on 18th November, be approved.—[Mr. Garel-Jones.]
That the draft Enterprise Ulster (Continuation of Functions) (Northern Ireland) Order 1986, which was laid before this House on 18th November, be approved.—[Mr. Garel-Jones.]

Question agreed to.

Security Services (Accountability)

Mr. Tim Brinton: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek your advice on a matter concerning the Adjournment debate. The hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) will talk about the security services. I seek your advice in view of a letter from the noble Lord Rothschild that will appear in tomorrow's edition of the Daily Telegraph. Is it not right that the hon. Member should be extremely careful, in view of the fact tht the noble Lord Rothschild's letter states that the director-general of MI5 has unequivocal evidence that Lord Rothschild was not and never had been a Soviet agent——

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. I cannot rule on what an hon. Member may say. I cannot rule on a hypothesis. The hon. Member should wait and see.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: Further to the point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have just ruled that it is not a point of order.

Motion made and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Garel-Jones.]

Mr. Brian Sedgemore: I welcome the Minister to the debate. Unlike the Minister, I have had access to secrets. I have been positively vetted and I have attended courses organised by MI5 at Curzon street. Ironically, I have been security cleared for the debate, but the Minister has not.
Today, an ideological difference emerged between the Labour party and the Conservative party. The Labour party believes that MI5 and M16 should be accountable to Parliament and to the public. The Conservative party says that that accountability should be to a select number of Ministers drawn from the Executive—that is, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, and the Home Secretary.
I should have thought that there could have been agreement on this matter. Bearing in mind that the proceedings in the Australian court have damaged the reputations and integrity of the Cabinet Secretary, the Attorney-General and the Prime Minister, and bearing in mind the contempt in which some members of MI5 and MI6 now hold those three persons because of the harm that that court case has caused to their services, surely the time has come for the Prime Minister to put country before party and pride and to abandon these proceedings.
Lord Rothschild was correct when he told Peter Wright that he thought that the Prime Minister was inexperienced and could not handle these matters properly. I am bound to say that I think that the problem is much graver than that. If there is to be accountability to Parliament, and if there is even to be democracy, Ministers or Prime Ministers should not lie to Parliament. That accusation that an hon. Member lied is so serious that it cannot even be made in the House. We have to say that Ministers or Prime Ministers deliberately and seriously misled Parliament. That is the charge that I level against the Prime Minister and can prove against the Prime Minister. In Hansard of 26 March 1981, column 1079, the Prime Minister——

Mr. Nicholas Soames: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Have I not just heard the hon. Gentleman make the gravest charge against the Prime Minister, namely that she has misled—or, further, lied to—the House? Is that not a grave and serious matter?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: : That construction can be put on the remarks of the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore). If that was his intention, he must withdraw the expression.

Mr. Dalyell: Further to the point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must resume his seat.

Mr. Sedgemore: The allegation that I have made against the Prime Minister is that she has misled the House of Commons. I believe that that allegation is perfectly in order.

Mr. Soames: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am dealing with a point of order. If the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch is alleging that the Prime Minister deliberately misled the House, he must withdraw his remarks.

Mr. Sedgemore: I respectfully argue, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I know of no reason not to suggest that the Prime Minister has misled the House of Commons. The word "mislead" is not, in my respectful submission, out of order in "Erskine May" or in the terms of the proceedings of the House. If we could never say that a Minister had misled the House, we could never criticise a Minister at all.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The House rests on the assumption that we are all honourable Members. Although it may be in order to recognise that an hon. Member may inadvertently mislead the House, it is not in order, and has recently been so ruled by Mr. Speaker, for an hon. Member to accuse any other hon. Member—a Minister or otherwise—of deliberately misleading the House. If the hon. Member is seeking to persist in that, I must tell him that he must withdraw.

Mr. Sedgemore: I shall use any word that you care to mention, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member is responsible for his own words. I am responsible for judging whether they are admissible. It is for the hon. Member to withdraw the words he used if he is saying that the Prime Minister has deliberately misled the House.

Mr. Sedgemore: I shall withdraw those words and any other words that you care to mention, Sir.
On 26 March 1981, following an investigation after the publication of the Chapman Pincher book, the Prime Minister said:
The case for investigating Sir Roger Hollis was based on certain leads that suggested, but did not prove, that there had been a Russian intelligence service agent at a relatively senior level in British counter-intelligence in the last years of the war."—[Official Report, 26 March 1981; Vol. 1, c. 1079.]
That statement was untrue on an important matter of national security. The proof that it was untrue is as follows. First—I advance this only as a matter of corroboration—I ask the House to turn to an article in The Times written nine months later, on 12 December 1981, by Mr. Chapman Pincher. He said:


Mrs. Thatcher's statement…has been analysed by some of the former investigating officers. They have found at least six areas where it is grossly at variance with the facts as they knew them.
I have subsequently discovered that one of those officers was Mr. Peter Wright.
Speaking of the inquiry into the inquiries into allegations against Mr. Roger Hollis, Mr. Chapman Pincher said that they did not arise out of the war. He said:
In fact they were undertaken because so many MI5 operations in the 1950s and 1960s went so seriously wrong that they could be explained only if there was a high-level spy still in the organisation.
That statement, I subsequently discovered, is true in as far as it states the reasons for the allegations and investigations made against Hollis. What were involved were the operations of the 1950s, and 1960s and not anything that happened in the war. The Prime Minister, when she made her statement on 26 March 1981, knew that.
Indeed, I go further. The Prime Minister had received a letter from the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken)—I spoke to the hon. Gentleman this evening and told him that I would mention this—dated 31 January 1980. That is three months after the right hon. Lady's statement about Blunt and six months before she is said to have met Lord Rothschild. The hon. Member for Thanet, South told her in that letter that suspicion arose out of the operations and foul-ups of the 1950s and 1960s—indeed, as late as 1964. My investigations reveal that some of the information in the letter from the hon. Member for Thanet, South was, in fact, new to the Prime Minister.
In the court case in Australia, Sir Robert Armstrong repeated the Prime Minister's statement of 26 March 1981 in a series of sworn affidavits. He said that the investigations into Sir Roger Hollis had arisen out of the last years of the war. He knew when he swore those affidavits that that statement was untrue, and in a series of heated exchanges in the Australian court the judge replied to Mr. Turnbull:
Your point was that there was a deliberately misleading statement in the House… The point is there. It is made.
The case is made by Mr. Chapman Pincher, by the hon. Member for Thanet, South and his sources, which are good and reliable, by Mr. Peter Wright, by Sir Robert Armstrong and by subsequent investigations. In making that statement on 26 March 1981, the Prime Minister traduced the democratic process.
I should now like to turn briefly to Sir Robert Armstrong, and I shall begin by observing that, when a country sends its Cabinet Secretary on a 12,000-mile journey to mislead a foreign court, that is surely the nadir of moral bankruptcy. Sir Robert Armstrong said that he was "economical with the truth". Some people would say that he privatised it; that is to say, if he can get away with not telling the truth, he is prepared to do so. He kept telling the judge in that trial that he did not know about this important security matter——

Mr. Soames: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Surely it cannot be right for the Floor of this House to be used as a forum for the character assassination of one of the highest public servants in the land who is currently representing the Crown before a court in another country. Can it be right that the character of this good man should be assassinated by an hon. Gentleman during an Adjournment debate?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Mr. Speaker has recently drawn attention to the problems that arise when allegations are made in the House about someone who does not have the right or the opportunity to seek redress for his grievance about the allegations made against him. We should be very cautious, but so far I have not heard on this point anything from the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) that I could rule out of order.

Mr. Sedgemore: I am grateful for that ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall not be bullied by Government Members—[Interruption.]—and I shall not be deflected from the truth by cynical and callous laughter.
Sir Robert Armstrong kept telling the judge that he did not know about this or that important matter of security. I find that odd, because, since the time of Harold Wilson's Government, the Cabinet Secretary is the principal civil servant for security matters. If he does not know what is going on, it means that the Prime Minister does not know. If there is no knowledge of what is going on, there is no accountability. That is assuming that Sir Robert told the truth in the Australian court when he said that he was ignorant of the matters about which he was being cross-examined.
I shall now come to the matter of Lord Rothschild. In order to get to the bottom of this cloudy issue one must seek to understand the possible motives of Lord Rothschild in his conversations with Peter Wright. Those in the know who advise me know a lot more about this matter than I do, and they tell me that there are three possible motives for Lord Rothschild seeking to get Wright to encourage Mr. Chapman Pincher to produce his book.
First, they say it is possible that Lord Rothschild still thought that Sir Roger Hollis was a spy and that the Government had come to the wrong conclusion. My advisers do not think that that is likely, but they say it is a possible motive. Secondly—this leads me directly to the point just raised, though I must say that I knew about it before then—they say it is possible that Lord Rothschild was protecting himself or a third party. Those in the know tell me, and I believe that they are right, that Lord Rothschild was not the fifth or sixth or seventh man or, indeed, a spy at all.
They say that there is a third possibility, and in my view it is the most intriguing and possibly the correct one. They say they believe that Lord Rothschild was attempting to create a cause celebre by which some short-term instability would be created inside the security services in order to create more political control in the long term. The question is simple. Did the Prime Minister know about that? Did she authorise Lord Rothschild to do and say what he did? Unless Lord Rothschild was so authorised, whatever his motives, he was in serious breach of the Official Secrets Act 1911. That is the point that Conservative Members refuse to examine. The fourth matter relates to the Attorney-General. I am in some difficulty in this respect, because I have a sneaking and fairly high regard for the Attorney-General and I will not traduce him in this debate as I might otherwise have done. I am very sorry that Sir Robert Armstrong traduced the Attorney-General for a week without correcting his comments about the Attorney-General. There are some questions that the Attorney-General must answer. Why did he tell William Heinemann, Mr. Wright's publisher, in October that he should drop the Australian case and save his money


because the Prime Minister and Mr. Bob Hawke, the Australian Prime Minister, were going to fix the Australian courts? Is it appropriate conduct for Prime Ministers of two countries to fix the Australian courts——

Mr. Soames: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman has now said on the Floor of the House that the Attorney-General suggested that a court in a foreign land was going to be fixed. Is that not a fundamental breach of privilege in this House? It cannot continue.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am not sure that I followed the point that the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch was making. However, I thought that his point was rather different from that put to me in the hon. Gentleman's point of order.

Mr. Sedgemore: The second question that I would like to ask is, is it appropriate for a Law Officer to talk about foreign courts and those possibilities in those terms? I understand that, if the matter had been left to the Attorney-General, he would not have tried to stop the publication of Mr. Wright's book. That was basically the Prime Minister's decision. Surely, under the conventions of our constitution, before the Attorney-General tried to re-write them with his bogus distinctions between criminal and civil actions, he should have been consulted. He was not consulted about the publication of Mr. Chapman Pincher's book, but who were the lawyers who gave the advice in that case? They must have been responsible to some Minister, either to the Attorney-General, the Home Secretary or the Prime Minister. Who will accept the responsibility for their curious advice—the unnamed lawyers or one of the Ministers?
If we sum up the facts of the case and examine the conduct of the Prime Minister, the Cabinet Secretary, Lord Rothschild and the Attorney-General, we discover that their actions show that the security services are out of control, that there is no proper accountability and that national security is not safe in the Prime Minister's hands.
In response to that, we should take two steps. First we should set up a Select Committee, not of both Houses, but of the House of Commons—the democratically elected Members of Parliament. The members of that Committee should not simply be drawn from existing Privy Councillors, most of whom will at some time have come from the Executive. They should be drawn from existing Privy Councillors and Back Benchers who would have to be made Privy Councillors and would have to be positively vetted.

Mr. John Carlisle: Including sacked Parliamentary Private Secretaries.

Mr. Sedgemore: At least sacked Parliamentary Private Secretaries have been positively vetted; that is more than the hon. Member for South Africa can claim.
Secondly, that Select Committee should be advised by a parliamentary security commission, which should have the power to investigate on behalf of the Committee and also on behalf of those who lay complaints against members of the security services. That is a sensible and modest proposal which arises out of this shabby episode, and I hope that the Minister will agree to it.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Waddington): I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman was not in the House for much of this afternoon's debate, but it means that I can be excused for repeating some matters that have already been dealt with today.
I must first say that anyone answering such a debate is constrained in what he can say because he must stick to the practice of not commenting on security matters. The House also knows that I am under a further constraint because I cannot comment on matters in issue in the case in Australia. Of that case I shall say only that the Government are defending the principle that former intelligence agents owe a lifelong duty of confidentiality. I think that that is something that any sensible person can understand.
I am bound to say that I was deeply shocked by the frivolity displayed by some Opposition Members this afternoon, who seemed to think that it was a huge joke that we had failed to prevent the publication in Ireland of a book by another former agent. These are not matters for frivolity. The attitude of Opposition Members, including the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore), cannot increase the standing of the House in the country. All that they have succeeded in showing is a determination to make whatever mischief they can, regardless of the interests of the country.
What the hon. Gentleman said this evening hardly improves the argument for greater disclosure of security matters to a Select Committee. I would think that what he said completely destroys any argument there might have been for disclosure of information to such a body, on which he could sit.
The real issue is that there obviously cannot be complete openness about those responsible for the nation's security. If we are to keep our defences against espionage and terrorism, secrecy is essential. There is obviously a public interest in seeing that the Security Service carries out its duties properly, but such public interest in the oversight of the Security Service must be satisfied by something other than a process of chequebook journalism.
The established practice—and it is not necessarily the wrong practice just because it is long established and has been followed over the years by Governments of the Right and the Left—is that the responsibility for these matters should fall upon the Home Secretary of the day, who in turn is accountable to Parliament.
It is said that there should be some external oversight, but a number of questions have to be asked and answered. First, what form of external oversight will preserve effectively the necessary secrecy of Security Service operations and the necessary confidence in that secrecy?
Secondly, what form of external oversight can be devised that will not blunt or diminish the very personal responsibility of the Home Secretary of the day to this House? Thirdly, given the constraints under which it would have to operate, would any new body actually be able to meet the concerns expressed and thereby serve any useful purpose?
That brings me to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary this afternoon. A barrier of secrecy must be drawn between the Security Service on the one hand and the debates in this House or on the front pages of newspapers on the other. But then the question is, on which side of that dividing line would a monitoring


body sit? On the secret side? How would that help public accountability? Even if it were a Select Committee of this House, what good could it do if all that it could say was that it was satisfied that all was well without being able to produce evidence of methods of operation to which it had been given access? If it was not given access to those operations, how could it satisfy those who are so anxious to find out more about the operations of the secret services?

Mr. Soames: I entirely accept my hon. and learned Friend's comments about operational matters, but could there not be a role for a Security Commission which had oversight rather than hindsight in respect of administrative measures, which might have prevented the situation in which Mr. Wright finds himself?

Mr. Waddington: I was hoping to come to some of those matters later. My hon. Friend heard what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said this afternoon. It may be possible to return to those matters later when there is less froth and less nonsense being talked in the House by Members such as the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch. We may then be able to return to these issues in a sane and sensible mood, but tonight I do not have time to do more than point out the evident absurdities in some of the arguments advanced by hon. Members such as the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch.
There are difficulties if the body is to be on the secret side of the fence, as it were, but if it sat on the public side of the dividing line it is hard to see how it could perform any useful function at all.
Various suggestions have been made as to the kind of body that could carry out a reviewing role. The right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) made one suggestion earlier today. Others have included the Security Commission mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames). As my hon. Friend knows, the Security Commission is a panel of people called upon ad hoc to report on particular matters. It does not attempt to provide a continuous monitoring of the security services. If it were given a wider public monitoring role its membership would need to be supplemented in a way that might make it little different from, say, a committee of Privy Councillors. What is certain is that any of those suggestions would tend to blunt—because they would share it—the heavy responsibility to the House which rests on the Home Secretary of the day. That is an important obstacle. There may be a way round it, but so far it is very difficult to see one and I have certainly heard nothing today to suggest a ready route around it.
Some of those who argue for some form of external oversight talk as though the present arrangements left Parliament wholly uninformed. That is evident nonsense. There has been greater openness under this Government than ever before. In view of certain remarks made tonight,

perhaps I should prove my point by spelling out again some of what was said by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary this afternoon.

Mr. John Carlisle: Talking about the remarks made by the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore), should it not be noted that the hon. Gentleman was sacked for leaking secrets from the office of the then Secretary of State for Energy, and admonished by the Prime Minister of the day, so the House should take virtually no notice of what he has said this evening?

Mr. Sedgemore: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was not sacked for leaking any documents from the office of the Secretary of State. It is typical of the hon. Gentleman that he cannot distinguish between the truth and lies.

Mr. Waddington: I do not intend to get involved in these matters, save to say that the whole of the hon. Member's conduct tonight has done no credit to him or to anyone else and he cannot complain if he is attacked on the Floor of the House.

Mr. Sedgemore: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the Minister to stand there and seek to back up the hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Carlisle), who has deliberately misled the House about what happened to me when I was in government? Can Ministers act with Back Benchers unable to distinguish between truth and lies? I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for the same protection as that for which those hon. Members have asked. That dreadful Minister there does not know the difference.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Unless I misunderstood the Minister, I did not hear him make the allegation about which the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) complains.

Mr. Sedgemore: The Minister condoned the allegation, and he knows it. I believe, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you should protect Back-Bench Members from that kind of conduct from that kind of Minister. It is not acceptable.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that the Minister is seeking to respond to the hon. Gentleman's allegation.

Mr. Waddington: There was no allegation, but some may notice that it is always the bullies of this world who shout the loudest when they get kicked back.
I was just reminding the House of some of the important points——

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Wednesday evening and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty-five minutes past Twelve o'clock.